Rule #12: Share your deductions with someone you trust

"Mark?" Saera said softly as her fingers clenched the fabric of her skirt.

The detective looked over at her when he pulled his car to a red light, "Yeah?"

He had to admit, he was a little surprised. The two of them had just come back from following a lead, that ended up being a flop, and Saera barely spoke the whole time.

For the last 3 hours, he usually chatty sidekick was silent as a lamb.

It was the strangest change in personality from when they were at the bakery earlier that day.

"How many people are on The Collector, case?" She asked slowly.

Mark knit his brows together, "What do you mean?"

"Like how many people are working on the case?"

He pursed his lips and shrugged his shoulders, "It depends. I'm the lead detective on the case, which means everyone answers to me, but Jackson is my second in command, but we have a relationship where I trust him enough to call the shots when we need it. Other than that, we get help from whoever we need. Sometimes we need the tech guys, sometimes the ME and sometimes any uniformed officer available when we need backup."

Saera bit on her nail, "But there's no one else that's really invested in the case, right? Like no one who would go out of their way to solve the case on their own?"

Mark shot her a confused look, "Not unless I've asked them to. Why?"

"Nothing." She said quietly as she stared out of the window.

Maybe she was reading too much into it. Just because the note said POI, didn't mean that Min Ah was a cop.

That was a huge leap.

She couldn't risk throwing the case off with some half assed deduction. In the past, she was giving him information that she had seen with her own two eyes, but this, this was a stretch.

And this was her first 'vision' that she didn't have a lot of proof to back up.

She had to be careful.

It was different before.

Before she watched from a distance.

Before she barely saw it through the darkness.

Before, all she saw were crime scene photographs.

But now she was seeing an actually corpse and it's disgusting scent. She was seeing a dead girl, killed by the hands of a psychopath that she was 'helping' catch.

"You're worried about Youngjae and Mireu?" Mark guessed as he pulled into the precinct's parking lot.

Saera faked a smile and threw the door open, "Jackson's there, right? You trust him, so there shouldn't be a problem."

"You shouldn't believe in someone so much." He said while getting out of the car.

Saera didn't look taken aback as she followed him into the precinct. "You're living next door to me, protecting me and my brother from a psychotic serial killer who apparently has it out for me. So it's not exactly like you're giving me much of a choice."

"Touché."

-----

Saera was whistling softly as she strutted down the hallway in front of him.

Mark watched in amusement as he trailed behind her. She's been at the precinct so many times that the front security desk had started to recognize her and didn't even bother to get her to sign in.

It was like she owned the damn place.

His face melted into confusion when he caught up to her where she stood in the doorway, unmoving.

"What's everyone doing?" Her voice was filled with confusion as she took a cautious step into the room.

Mark looked over her head and felt his stomach drop when he saw the crowd of police officers circling his desk. There was only one reason why any of these cops would dare getting that close to Detective Tuan's desk.

"What's going on?" Saera asked as she walked straight up to the crowd, trying to look over the officers.

Mark's eyes widened as he reached for her, "Saera, don't."

But she had already slipped through his grasp and wiggled through the crowd. Mark started to panic and forced his way through his colleagues, pushing them aside to grab at her.

"SAERA, STOP!"

He quickly grabbed the back of her neck and spun her around so that her face bumped into his chest. Saera yelped, unable to see how everyone was gaping at the woman who was currently in the senior detective's arms.

"What are you doing?" She muffled against the fabric of his shirt before trying to push him away.

Mark ground his teeth when he saw the familiar metal box with purple lace ribbon uncurled on the ground. He kept her locked in his chest as she balked at his bold behaviour. He lowered his mouth to her ear while keeping his glare on the box behind her.

"Just…don't, okay?" He whispered lowly.

Saera frowned and shoved him away before spinning around, "What is your prob--"

It was grotesque.            

The lid of the metal box was taken off, which did nothing but reveal the horrific sight.

Another body dismembered and stuffed into a box with its victim's head placed on top.

It wasn't the first time she saw something like this.

But it the first time she saw it, 2 feet away from her, in bright, exposing light.

She had seen The Collector's victim's from a distance, in the middle of the night while hidden behind garbage cans. She's seen them in crime scene photographs that she stole with her phone.

But she never saw them right in front of her, with the disgusting, gut wrenching smell still lingering in the air.

She blindly reached behind her, trying to grab Mark, but he was out of reach. When he saw her hand waving behind her back, he quickly stuck his arm out and let her curl her fingers around him.

"Oh my god." She stuttered while taking a step back.

Her knees buckled and Mark was the first one to grab either side of her waist to hold her  up. "Sae--"

It was getting too hot.

She couldn't breathe and her head was spinning so fast that she couldn't hold her gaze on anything. The whole room was tilting and blurring.  

"I think I'm going to be sick." She whispered before covering .

Saera shoved Mark away from her before pushing her way through the crowd with tears obstructing her vision. Mark watched Saera run away with wide eyes before looking back the body that needed investigating.

"Hwasa! Check the body, I need a preliminary. Call every officer you have at your disposal except Wang. I want answers. Now." He ordered with a booming voice.

The middle aged woman nodded furiously while slipping her rubber glove on while barking orders. Mark jumped to look over everyone's head, but when he still couldn't catch sight of the pink haired psychic, he pushed people aside before racing down the corridor.

It was enough that she had to see dead people in her mind, she didn't deserve to see them in real life too.

-----

Mark had raced through every hallway and every conference room in search for Saera but he couldn't find her anywhere.

She was gone.

And for some reason that scared him.

She vanished, just like that.

Right under his nose.

Slipped right through his fingers and it was like he couldn't get to her fast enough.

He could feel his blood pumping through his veins and sweat form on his temple as he weaved through the different desks.  

Mark was about to race passed the filing room when he noticed a stream of light bleeding through the bottom of the door.

He closed his eyes with a sigh of relief and took a moment to catch his breath before slowly opening the door.

She looked broken.

And painfully small.

Saera was curled into a corner of the room with her head pressed against her bent knees and her hair spilling over her legs as she hugged them.

Mark felt alarm run through his system when she lifted her head to see who had entered the room. He saw his fair share of distraught women in his line of work but there was something about seeing Saera looking that traumatized that freaked him out.

He didn't know what to do.

He didn't know how to deal with someone freaking out.

So he decided to wing it.

He walked over to her, dropped to his knees and cupped her cheeks, "Look at me."

Saera kept her eyes shut as images of the body flashed in her head. Mark narrowed his eyes and tilted her face up to his.

"I know what you're thinking. Stop. Look at me." He hissed.

Saera squeezed her eyes shut even tighter and caught her bottom lip between her teeth, digging into the flesh until it started to bleed.

And then she felt it.

She felt his thumbs her cheeks softly.

Her heart crawled up as his thumbs caressed her checks. Her eyebrow flinched before she slowly opened her eye to see Mark's face inches from hers.

"Good." He breathed out.

Her eyes shook in fear, "It was horrifying."

"I know." He said softly.

The light in Saera's eyes dimmed as the images flashed in her head again.

"Stop doing that. Stop thinking about it." He ordered.

Her eyebrow twitched as her eyes hardened, "How?! How the am I supposed to pretend not to see that? How am I supposed to unsee a sawed apart body. You can't just pretend like that didn't happen. I can never for--"

"I learned something on the force." Mark said abruptly. "Do you want to know what it is?"

Saera glared at him but still gave in, "Yeah."

"You will see a lot of prejudice. You will see a lot of tragedies and worst of all, you will see a lot of death. But instead of feeling bad for the victim or pitying yourself for not doing a better a job, make it up to them by bringing them to justice. That's the best that you can do." He murmured.

Saera was silent as she took his words and let them mull over in her mind. She chewed on the inside of her cheek as she eyes flickered around the room, away from Mark's face.

Suddenly she wished she never came into the precinct a month ago, claiming to have a vision of something that she could've just said that she witnessed.

She had played a hand of a much bigger game and she wasn't sure she was ready to see if anyone called her bluff.

She may have had a killer poker face, but that meant next to nothing when your cards weren't worth .

His hands stayed on her cheeks as he held her face firmly with his hands, "I need you to talk to me right now. I need to hear what you're thinking."

"Mark.