Death before Dishonour

A year - that was how long they had been chasing her now. None of the normal leads or areas worked, her co-signer was as clueless as everyone else and it seemed like she'd vanished in to thin air. That was the part that worried me the most - she was too good at the running, so what would she be like when she was finally caught up with? From what Leland had said...she was a firecracker. Dangerous at best, lethal at worst. There was no telling what a year of running had done to her. If she had been unstable before, she would surely be manic by now, not to mention paranoid. It seemed like no matter how much time, effort, resource and prayer they put in to finding this girl, she would always slip through the net just when they thought they had her.

But Duane had been digging and swore blind he'd been sent information that would force them to change their game play entirely. It was the only way to catch her. So much time and effort had gone in to trying to pin her down that people were starting to chase down old leads. They were all growing tired of the chase.

"One thing we've all been ignoring, something that is so glaringly obvious when you pick up on it. And this," He was holding up a paper file - it wasn't all that thick in all honesty, but there was something in it, you'd be blind not to see it. "This explains it away. Look at the list of people she's attacked, look at their stats - what is the one thing they all have in common?" The lists had gone up, all that information, colour coded for ease. She had to be getting close to sixty by now, the system wasn't a favourite, but it worked. But there was one thing, one constant colour.

"They're all men"

It was Lyssa who spoke - she saw it, the constant strand of blue running through all the reports. Women had come close, that was in the shared reports, but she'd never attacked women. She'd always gone after the men. The question was, why? Why only go after men? Did she not see women as enough of a threat.

"That one time we had her cornered, think back, what happened? What changed?" It was Duane who spoke, but all could remember that day well enough. The sun had been blistering that day and they thought they had her at an old apartment block. All the men had been inside, leaving just Lyssa and Beth at the cars, along with the camera crew, even then it was just the one woman with a mobile unit. There had been no men present in that party. She slipped out of the shadows, already clearly suffering the affects of not enough to eat and not nearly enough sleep. She'd been so uneasy, she hadn't said a word, but she'd got close. She was almost in touching distance when they'd burst out and coming charging after her - she'd flown away and they'd lost her.

"She was scared, but she wasn't aggressive. She was unarmed, she was flighty though. She kept looking over at the door, like she knew you were in there. She went to speak, but as soon as you came out...she seemed to lose all sense and ran, almost like you were the most terrifying thing on the planet." Beth seemed to know what was coming as she spoke, evaluating what they knew. Drawing her conclusions before looking over at Duane. "You're not chasing her any more, are you?" He nodded, that grim look spreading over his face. Oh yes - no more of their men on her case, just the women. There had to be a reason and it had to have something to do with his file. Whatever was in it, it wasn't for that day though. He put it in to a folder and locked it up.

"We leave it a few days, let her settle since the last attack and hope this new idea works. The women need to figure this out between them. They need something that's going to work for them, not for us. For now though, one of Leland's bonds have broken parole. We make them priority for the time being. Business as usual."