Leaving a child home by themselves is never a good thing for any parent to do, but Mark had no choice. He had been called back to the police station by one of his colleagues, Matt Gibson, who wanted him to look over one of the recent cases of another person who went missing, possibly another victim of the Jigsaw Killer. Later that same night, the two of them received a call about a disturbance over at an abandoned building once known as Crossroads Manufactory. The incident involved a crazy homeless man, and just as the dangerous man disarmed Gibson and held him at gunpoint in an attempt to kill him, Mark appeared behind the perpetrator and ordered him to drop his weapon. Although the homeless man complied to his demand, Mark shot him, anyway. This wasn't the first time he fired his gun on someone, but it was the first time he made a deliberate kill. Even though the detective just saved his life, Gibson could only stare in shock of his partner's cold-blooded brutality. Once he helped the younger man back onto his feet, Mark showed a sinister smirk on his face and told him, "You owe me."

It was half past one o'clock in the morning by the time the detective finally got back home. Before retiring to his own bedroom, Mark went to check on Sally in her room and make sure she was still asleep. Judging by her gentle breathing and the peaceful expression on her face, he assumed that nothing was wrong. Not to his eyes, at least. He accepted this as a sign to let her rest and turned to leave, all without showing any scrap of affection before he walked out of her room and closed the door.

The next morning, Mark woke up and went to the living room and turned on the TV, then he went into the kitchen and started making some coffee while he listened to the news broadcast from the next room. Once the coffee was finished, he poured himself a cup and went back into the living room with his mug, sipping his morning brew while he watched a newsman give a report on another possible Jigsaw murder. The detective was baffled by all this. He had been on the Jigsaw case since it first started back at the beginning of the year, and he and his department were still no closer in finding out who this crazy madman was. What kind of person would do such a thing and why? What was the motivation?

Hearing his watch beeping, Mark looked at his wrist and set his coffee mug on the table, then went to turn the TV off before he went to wake up his niece. Knocking on her door, he announced, "Sal, it's time to get up. You awake?" He waited a minute for her to answer him back, but after hearing no response, Mark opened the door and turned on the light as he looked in the room to see for himself if Sally was still asleep, only to find that the child's bed was empty. His niece was nowhere to be seen in her room. The first thing the detective did was glance over at the window to see if there was any signs of a break-in, which there wasn't, so he went over to check the closet, thinking she was playing a game of hide-and-seek, but the little girl wasn't there, either. He was getting a little worried now.

There was still one place Mark hadn't checked yet and that was underneath Sally's bed, but just as he turned around to go search there, a small, dark-haired figure popped up from underneath the bed on the left side, surprising the detective by pointing a gun at him.

"Freeze, bad guy!" Sally warned him, a serious look on her face. "All right, mister. Put your hands up where I can see them."

Confused, the detective complied by raising his hands to the same level as his head.

"Mark Hoffman, you're under arrest for breaking the law", the child declared.

"I didn't do anything", Mark stated, having no idea what she was talking about.

"Tell it to the judge", Sally remarked.

"What are you gonna do, shoot me?"

Raising the gun a little bit higher, Sally opened fire on her uncle and shot him right in the chest. Mark showed a look of pain and shock on his face as he covered his chest with both hands, looking down and seeing a wet spot on his shirt where the child shot him with the weapon, which wasn't a real one at all. In fact, there was no sign of the color red anywhere on the soaked, white material, for it was just water, yet the detective played along with his niece and showed a sorrowful expression to her before he dropped down to his knees, then rolled his eyes into the back of his head and collapsed on the floor.

Sally rose up from her hiding spot and came around the bed to walk over to where her uncle was on the floor, lying on his right side with his eyes closed as though he were dead. Still pointing the murder weapon at him, the little girl took one hand off the gun and poked Mark's left shoulder with her index and middle finger, receiving no response from him. He didn't even look like he was breathing.

Looking worried that she may have actually killed him for real, Sally let the gun fall from her grasp and got down on her knees as she placed her hands on his left arm and started to shake him, hoping he was still alive. "Uncle Mark, wake up!" Sally cried. "Come on, Uncle Mark. Please wake up."

Suddenly, the detective turned his body over to lie down on his back, and without any warning, Mark opened his eyes and picked up the black, plastic gun, squirting water in his niece's face. The little girl screamed and backed away at once, showing obvious dislike of being squirted with her own toy gun.

Mark sat up and laughed at his own cruel joke, thinking himself a fine actor even if his niece didn't think so herself.

"That wasn't very funny, Uncle Mark", Sally scolded him.

"Did you really think I was dead?" Mark asked her.

"Yes", Sally whimpered, looking like she was about ready to cry.

Mark dropped the hideous smirk from his lips and reached his left hand out to the little girl, which Sally took and stepped forward so her uncle could cup his hand to her right cheek, wiping away the water from her face, as well as her eye, with the pad of this thumb.

"I'm really sorry if I scared you", Mark apologized. "I'm also sorry about yesterday, and I want you to know I would never do anything to hurt you. Not now, not ever. You understand?"

"Yes", Sally answered.

"All right, then. Get dressed and meet me in the kitchen", said Mark. "I'm driving you to school today."

"How come?" Sally wondered.

"Because I want to", Mark answered. "Is that all right?"

Sally nodded.

"Okay."

With that said, Mark got up off the floor and walked out of Sally's bedroom and went back out to the living room, retrieving his coffee mug from the table before he returned to the kitchen. Setting his mug on the dining table, the detective went to the cupboard and opened it to take down a box of cereal and a bowl, then opened the utensil drawer and grabbed a spoon. By the time he finished pouring a bowl of milk and cereal for her, Sally had entered in kitchen, all dressed and ready for school, and sat down at the dining table and ate her breakfast while Mark tried to enjoy his coffee and read the newspaper.

After a few minutes of silence, Mark spoke up and asked his niece, "You know that new park they built right across City Hall?"

"Yeah", Sally answered.

"How would you like to go there today after school?"

Sally looked at him with widened eyes, the topic piquing her interest. "Really?"

Mark nodded. "Mm-hmm."

"Are you tricking me?" Sally asked him.

"No, I'm not tricking you", Mark reassured. "I want you to have a good day today. I have the day off, so after you get out of school, I'll stop by and pick you up. Would you like that?"

Sally smiled and nodded in response.

"Okay, we'll do that."

"I can't wait."

Mark showed her a hint of a smile, taking another sip of his coffee and setting his mug down on the table again. "You know, I never did give you your birthday present", he mentioned.

Sally leaned over in her seat and asked him, "Where is it?"

"It's in the fridge", Mark answered, matter-of-factly.

"The fridge?" Sally questioned, furrowing her eyebrows in confusion.

"Look for yourself if you don't believe me", said Mark.

Sally pushed her chair back and got up to go open the fridge door and find out what her uncle was talking about. Upon her inspection, the child gasped in surprise as her eyes beheld a medium-sized box wrapped in colorful paper, topped off with a bow. Sally removed the present from the lower shelf and turned to look over at her uncle.

"Can I open it?" Sally asked.

"That's the idea", Mark replied.

Closing the fridge door, Sally set her belated birthday present on the floor and started tearing the wrapping paper off the box, opening the lid and finding a beautiful, porcelain doll with brown eyes and dark brown hair, wearing a long-sleeved, white dress with a blue bodice and short-heeled white shoes.

"Uncle Mark, she's beautiful", Sally exclaimed happily, picking up the doll and touching its hair to feel how soft it was.

Standing up from his chair, Mark stepped forward and crouched down to match his niece's eye level. "You know what's so special about this doll?" He asked her.

Sally looked at him and shook her head, humming a "Mm-mmm" while doing so, meaning no.

"It belonged to your mother when she was just about your age", Mark explained. "I kept it hidden away all these years for safekeeping. I figured she would have wanted you to have it. Now you have something to remember her by."

Setting the doll back inside the box, Sally wrapped her arms around her uncle's neck, hugging him to show her appreciation of the thoughtful gift. "Thank you, Uncle Mark", she said.

Mark said nothing, but hugged his niece back in return, hiding a sad smile from her as he thought about Angelina and how much he missed his baby sister.

Once they got to the elementary school, Mark walked Sally to her classroom and was confronted by the teacher, who asked to speak with him. The detective told his niece to go put away her backpack, then he asked the middle-aged woman what the issue was about as they stepped out into the hallway to talk in private. After she put away her backpack in the storage cubby, Sally went over to sit down at one of the tables with some of the other children and looked over at the window on the door as she watched her uncle have a conversation with her teacher, trying to figure out what the two of them were saying outside the classroom. She couldn't hear what they were talking about, but it must have been pretty bad, for she saw the familiar anger return to her uncle's face. If Sally had walked out the door and asked them what was going on, both grownups would have told her it was none of her concern. The little girl continued watching her uncle while the teacher explained something to him, which made him furious enough to walk away and leave, without bothering to reenter the classroom and say goodbye to her.

While Sally was at school, Mark decided to take a drive around the city, keeping his eyes open for his quarry in the form of Seth Baxter. He succeeded in locating his prey somewhere near an abandoned mannequin factory, staying in his car while he watched the man who murdered his sister six years ago. At the moment, Seth Baxter was hanging out with his best friend, Evan, and a few of their racists friends. Mark felt nothing but raging hatred as he watched the person….No, the animal responsible for killing his only family. Even though he still had Sally to remind him of his sister, the detective saw this as something of a gray area, knowing that the blood in her veins was also that of a monster. She was just as much of a victim as Angelina was, but Mark never told his niece the reason why, and had no interest in revealing the facts to the innocent seven-year-old anytime soon. He wasn't just seeking out Seth Baxter to protect a child from getting hurt. He was mainly doing this for himself and Angelina. His sister's murder didn't deserve to be back out on the streets, socializing with his good-for-nothing Neo-Nazi associates. Mark thought of only one solution to fix this problem, and that was to murder his baby sister's killer.

Around three o'clock, Mark drove back to the elementary school and waited in his car until Sally came out of the building. The minute she stepped outside, the little girl rushed over to her uncle's vehicle and opened the passenger side door to sit in the seat next to him for a minute.

"How was school?" Mark asked.

"It was fun", Sally told him, as she opened her backpack and took out a piece of paper with a drawing of some kind on it. "I made this for you", she said, handing it over to her uncle to show him.

"What is it?" The detective questioned, examining the oddly-drawn creature with long ears.

"It's a bunny rabbit", the little girl told him.

"Oh, yeah, I see it now. Why did you paint it blue?"

"I like blue. It's my favorite color."

Mark looked at his niece and said with a small smile, "It's my favorite color, too."

"I knew you'd like it", said Sally.

Handing the painting back to his niece, Mark told Sally get in the backseat so he could take her to the park like he promised. The little girl obeyed her uncle and did as she was told by getting out of the car and closing the door before she got in the backseat and buckled herself in. Once this was accomplished, the detective started up the engine and drove away from the school, keeping his hands on the wheel and his eyes on the road in front of him. All the while, his mind kept wandering from one idea to another of how exactly he was going to get away with killing a person without getting caught.

"What did Mrs. Smith say to you this morning?" Sally asked.

"She said she was concerned about your behavior because of the people you said you saw yesterday", Mark answered. "I said some words I shouldn't have and told her to do her job right. She didn't care for it, but I told Mrs. Smith if she cared about your safety, she would take your story seriously."

"You didn't say goodbye to me before you left", Sally reminded him, sounding sad.

Mark glanced at the rearview mirror for a brief moment to look at the little girl sitting behind him, returning his gaze back onto the road so he wouldn't crash into anyone. "I'm sorry, I wasn't thinking", the detective apologized. "I had other things on my mind at the time."

"Like what?"

"Don't worry about it, Sally. You just worry about yourself and let me take care of it."

"If you say so."

Once he reached his destination, Mark parked his car next to the sidewalk and turned off the engine before getting out to open the door for his niece. Sally unbuckled herself and got out, then Mark shut the door and took hold of her hand as he walked her over to the playground. He released her hand and allowed her to go play for about an hour, watching the little girl race towards the playground, telling her to be careful. Sometimes, the detective was a little overprotective of his niece, proving that he cared for her despite the dilemma he still faced regarding the girl's so-called "father". Rather than dwell on these murderous, cold-blooded urges, Mark went over to sit down on a bench and took out a book from his coat pocket he had brought with him to help pass the time while Sally spend the afternoon playing.

Half an hour must have passed by until Mark was brought out of the world of literacy by a friendly, female voice that startled him. "Would you mind if I sit next to you, sir?"

Looking to his left, the detective saw that it was a young, red-headed woman of thirty-something. "No, not at all", he replied.

"Thank you", said the woman, sitting down next to him as she smoothed out a wrinkle on her dress. "Sorry if I scared you."

"Don't mention it", Mark responded, returning his attention back to the sentence where he left off.

Occupied with the book in his hands, the detective paid no attention to the redhead woman sitting on his left. The only time he tore his gaze away from the written words on the white pages was to lift his head and look over at the playground, making sure his niece was still within his sight. Sally moved from one end of the playground to the other, running from the swings and back over to the spinning wheel, then back to the playhouse to go down the slide. Seeing the little girl enjoying her playtime and displaying typical childlike behavior helped put his mind at ease, letting him know that everything was all right. Occasionally, Mark looked around to make sure there were no unwanted strangers in the area, keeping himself aware of his surroundings. Most of the pedestrians in the area were mainly families having a picnic and enjoying the sun. Some of them were couples taking a stroll through the park.

"Which one is yours?" The redhead woman asked him.

Mark looked back at her, lowering the book into his lap before he looked over at the playground and made a forward motion with his head. "The dark-haired girl over there on the swings", he answered.

The woman stared straight ahead and pointed out a female child with strawberry blonde hair who was climbing up the ladder connected to the playhouse. "That one over there is mine", she informed him. "Do you and your daughter come here often?"

"She's not my daughter, she's my niece", Mark corrected her, looking at the woman again. "She doesn't have a father."

Blinking, the red-headed woman looked surprised, if not taken aback by this revelation and said, "Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't-"

"Don't be", said Mark. "Believe me, it's for the best."

The woman shook her head and told him, "No, I'm sorry. I didn't know. Well, I'm sure your niece must be a very lucky girl to have someone like you for an uncle. I bet she's your perfect little angel, isn't she?"

Mark lowered his gaze a bit and nodded, failing not to show any sadness in his crystal blue eyes. "Yeah, she is", he said, then he turned his head to look forward and noticed there was a suspicious-looking character in the form of a middle-aged man wearing a black and red hoodie, who was sitting in a car right behind his, apparently watching the children.

Having a bad feeling about the old man, Mark closed the book in his hands and rose up from the bench, looking at the red-headed woman to tell her, "Excuse me."

"It was nice meeting you", the woman called out, but Mark ignored her, as he walked over to fetch his niece from the playground.

"Come on, Sally. It's time to go."

"Five more minutes."

"No, not five more minutes. Get down from there now. I don't want to have to come up and get you."

"Ahhh", Sally bemoaned, walking over to go down the slide one last time before she had to leave the park for the day. The minute her feet touched the ground, the little girl went over to her uncle, who took hold of her hand and walked over to his car and opened the backdoor for her, all while keeping his eyes on the old man, who started his vehicle and drove away. Once Sally buckled herself in, Mark closed the door and went around to get in the driver seat and started his car to drive back home.