Take a seat, guys. Get some food and whatever necessities you need because this is going to be one loonnngg chapter.

But everything will make sense after reading all of this.

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ACT    III

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              “HERE'S A GLASS of water, like you had asked,” Perez handed Dawn a glass of water, her hand on shoulder. She slid down beside Dawn.

              “Thank you,” Dawn smiled weakly, before she took a few sips and then decided to gulp down the whole thing.

              “Are you alright?” Johnson asked, seated opposite from the two ladies. He was very concerned, not only as an investigator but as a father.

              Dawn was his daughter. Bailey was also his daughter. He had just witnessed one daughter nearly kill the other and get away with it.

              “I will be. Thank you,” She said, again, setting her glass down on the coffee table.

              After rescuing Dawn, the investigators tried to chase after Bailey but unfortunately, they decided to repay Perez's favour of shooting down all four of Johnson's tires.

              Luckily, he had spare tires at the back of his car but he knew that by the time he would replace all the tires, Bailey and her companions would have vanished into the night.

               So Johnson drove Perez and Dawn to his house, where they tried to cater to Dawn's need. Perez insisted that she couldn't leave Dawn and she wanted to spend the night at Johnson's.

               Knowing her stubbornness, Johnson didn't complain. They ordered take out food which would arrive at Johnson's house in fifteen minutes.

             At the moment, the three were seated with Dawn covered in a blanket that Johnson provided. Even though she was warm, she could not stop her body from trembling.

             “You don't have to say what happened,” Perez rubbed Dawn's back, soothingly. “Take your time. We understand, don't we, Johnson?”

                Johnson nodded his head.

                “No,” Dawn's voice was slightly cracked. “I want to talk about it. Otherwise, I won't sleep much at night,”

                “Alright then,” Johnson said, his lips pressing into a thin line. “Whenever you are ready, Dawn,”

              “I was the person who was phoning you, Johnson,” Dawn's eyes met Johnson's. “Those riddles and clues. It was all me,”

              Johnson blinked. “ How were you able to contact me? ”

              “I should start from the very beginning,” Dawn said, taking a deep breath. Perez held her hand, for support. “D.A.B was started by Bailey and I, and a few other people. It stands for Dawn and Bailey. Creative, I know,”

            “I'm assuming you know about the kidnappings that had been going on. It didn't start out that way. It started when I found out that my former boyfriend, Jace Alexander Hamilton, was cheating on me. And it wasn't with any ordinary teenage girl. It was with an adult. A young female adult by the name, Madison Meyers,”

             “Sorry to stop you, Dawn, but Johnson, wasn't Madison Meyers your former wife? ” Perez turned to look at Johnson, motioning for him to tell Dawn that he was her father.

             “What?” It was Dawn's turn to be surprised. “Madison...she was your wife?”

             Johnson nodded his head. “It's a small world. We weren't married for very long, but I do know that when we were married, you and Bailey were in the children's home,”

            “Well, that makes you our father,” The beauteous blonde gulped, blinking. She couldn't believe it. “All this time, we never knew you were our father. Why didn't you ever come to see us?”

             “She didn't mention having any children,”

              Dawn's eyes darkened. “Typical. Of course she didn't,” 

              The male investigator's heart grew heavy. “I'm sorry. I found out recently, but more on that later. Do continue with your story,”

               “Right,” Dawn's eyes regained their normal colour. “Madison was supposed to be tutoring Jace Biology because his grades started slipping. I don't know how but somehow, a relationship began between the two and I found out, ”

             “I did the most rational thing that anyone would do: I ended the relationship and we went our separate ways. At that time, I was bummed out and talking to my twin, Bailey, about my breakup. That's when she told me that Isabella Martinez was going to go after Jace. She always had been trying to steal him, even when we were dating. Isabella was my former best friend so that kind of stung,”

             “One day, shortly after the breakup between Jace and I, she made this huge show of affection to Jace that pushed me over the edge. I started to act irrational. And after school, I asked Bailey and a couple of her friends to take care of Isabella after her cheerleading practice. Well, they offered to take care of her. I just agreed,”

              Johnson remembered Mrs Martinez's comments about how Isabella looked like she had seen a ghost.

             “After that, I was done. I didn't want anything else to do with Bailey and her friends. But they kept on pushing me, using their wit to make me cave in to their wants,”

             “Almost like peer pressure?” Perez asked, rubbing her thumb over Dawn's hand.

            “Yes. And as the time elapsed, the acts became more and more dangerous. You see, Bailey and I, have this...condition. When we were younger and our mother passed on, we didn't handle it as well as other kids would have,”

             “We would become very violent and our emotions would become untameable. It's called schizoactive disorder. The slightest thing can set us off — such as being cheated on or having a loved one die.  When our late father took us to the hospital, he was told to take us for therapy. We did go for therapy, every week, but then it became once a month and every time we would go, we would be prescribed medicine to help us curb it,”

              “The doctor told our father that the other alternative, apart from medicine, to reduce the trigger of our disorder would be to marry again. That way, we would still have a mother in our lives and not act so violent. Shortly after, he married Madison after weeks of dating,”

               “Bless him, I think he wanted to get married as soon as possible so that we could be better, but unfortunately, he married a monster,” She looked up at Johnson. “No offense,”

                 “None taken,” Johnson replied, shrugging his shoulders.

                “We don't know how, but after marrying Madison, our father died. Bailey and I, to this day, suspect that she must have killed him because he lived a healthy lifestyle. After he passed on, Madison tried to raise us with the money she was given as compensation from our relatives and her job as a barista. But she got fired and she couldn't make enough money to sustain the three of us,”

                “So she dumped Bailey and I at a children's home, which was odd because we thought that she would have enough money in the will our father wrote,”

                “Maybe she wasn't written in there,” Perez suggested.

               “Maybe indeed. However, now she had gotten another job and she was still living in our father's house. She sold it to make a little money for herself. I believe that's when she met you,” Dawn turned to Johnson.

              “We met at a coffee shop where she was the waitress. After a couple of weeks, we started going on dates together. Then, one day, she wanted me to marry her and I stupidly said yes. A few months afterwards, I caught her cheating on me when I was at work and I ended our relationship,” Johnson filled in.

                “I think she was fired again from her job because I remember she came to see Bailey and I,” She turned to Perez. “Oh yes! About the will, she was included. That day, she came ranting to us about how she had no job and no house and how our father had written how Bailey and I, once we turned eighteen, would inherit all his fortune while she would receive his ‘crown jewels’, meaning Bailey and I. Since Bailey and I aren't eighteen yet, our relatives are holding onto the money for us,”

               “She was duped and she was mad. Our father thought she loved us as much as he did, that's why he left us in her custody. His crown jewels were us, because he thought that we were valuable — not literally, of course,”

              “But the truth is she loathed us both from the start. When she came to see us that day, she was acting all sweet, pure and innocent. She told us to our relatives to let them give her a portion of the money. We refused,”

             “I think that's when your Biology teacher hired her as a tutor, right?” Perez asked. “Your Biology teacher is her aunt,”

             “I'm not sure but I guess so. Wait, ” She stopped. “If Madison is our Biology teacher's niece then we are her...I don't know. This is some messed up family tree that I do not want to get into right now. I can't think right now,”

             “Anyway. Back to the point. When I saw Jace with Isabella, I couldn't help but be jealous. The only reason why I agreed for Bailey and her friends to beat her up was because Bailey said it would help with our condition. She convinced me that instead of harbouring our emotions inside of us and going psychotic, we let it out by beating her up. So I agreed,”

               “After that, I was fine. Well, not fine, but I could handle my emotions with the medicine we had. Bailey and her gang became more aggressive to other girls who were interested in Jace. Then it became any female in general. I told Bailey that she had to stop. But she refused,”

               “I learnt that she had stopped taking the pills that our doctoe was giving us, claiming that she was fine. But she wasn't. I tried slipping them into her food, her water...anywhere, but one of her friends caught me and Bailey was aggravated,”

             “She flushed the pills down the toilet. Luckily, I still had some on me, but I had to keep it a secret. Bailey and her gang, very unstable at the time, now turned on females in general, targeting Madison now, for causing our demise. However, first they decided to leave the children's home to be able to get Madison. So they set it on fire, one night,”

            “I wasn't aware of their plans anymore. I stopped staying around them, and when they would have meetings in our room, I would go somewhere else. So I was surprised when Bailey woke me up at two in the morning, when the orphanage was being engulfed in flames, to tell me that we needed to leave urgently,”

            “I had to leave the orphanage, but I didn't want to leave with Bailey and her gang. So they basically kidnapped me. One of the girls knew someone who would let us crash at their house. They weren't home most of the time anyway,”

              “Now, out of school and the orphanage, Bailey and the gang decided to recruit members to get back at Madison. Keep in mind, Bailey was off and still is off her marbles because she is not taking her medicine. Her friends dissuaded her from doing so. I do not know how, but they were able to find teenagers are rotten as they are to back them up. Some of them weren't even teenagers — they were as old as twenty three, but they listened to Bailey. Bailey is their icon, their inspiration, not to mention that she is very intimidating,”

              “It was difficult to track Madison down because she was here, there and everywhere. Frustrated, they decided that they would start small, again. Now, it was anyone who they disliked in particular, starting with Jace and then Isabella,”

              “Bailey, to some extent, was a really good sister and she hated Jace because of what he did to me and because he chose Madison over me. Or so we believed. So they started plotting his kidnap. Someone heard that he was sneaking out to go to the Game Centre because of the new game that they had installed which he had been meaning to play,”

              “The idiot. He managed to get his two best friends, Jack Peterson and Parker Andrews to go with him even though it was really late. I wasn't about to let Jace get kidnapped so I got hold of one of the mobile phones to alert the police,”

                “That's when you called me,” Johnson realised.

                “Yes. I got your number from one of the telephone directories that was conveniently discarded in the same room that I was trapped in. I dialled 911, but they thought it was a prank. Afterwards, I called you Johnson because I had heard about you from women who would swoon over you or from television when you would solve yet another seemingly difficult case. Fortunately, your number was in the directory,”

              “When I called you and told you where to go, Bailey walked into the room. She held a gun and when she saw me with the phone in my hand, she shot it, disconnecting the call,” Dawn lifted her right hand to show them the wound from the impact of the bullet. “The first time she missed, the second time she got it right,”

              “The reason she had come to the room I was imprisoned in was because they wanted to use me as bait. They dragged me there against my own will, because they thought Jace would not go with them, if I were not there,”

               “They were right. As soon as he saw me, he obliged, unaware that he and his friends was being kidnapped. Before we got to the Arcade Centre, I knew that I couldn't let them kidnap Jace, Jack and Parker. So I got the idea to write a riddle of where they were going to next. That way, if anyone found the paper, they would dismiss it for some gibberish nonsense. I tore the paper from one of the blank pages of the directory and I got a pen from one of the cars that we were using at the time,”

             “I wrote the note in the car before they attacked the Centre and kidnapped Jace and his friends. I had to make sure that no one saw me or I would be dead. It was a huge gamble, but it paid off,”

               “The night-shift workers were petrified. Bailey tied him up them all up and locked him in the closet, before spraying the letters D.A.B on each one of their shirts or backs. That's how the media was able to know about D.A.B. Before that, Bailey would perform petty crimes such as stealing, violent acts or vandalism which raised complaints,”

               Things clicked inside Johnson's head. “So that's how I got the case file. Numerous complaints must have been raised by various people but no one took it seriously. I remember how my boss just shoved it to me, saying that I get it solved as quickly as possible. He, too, thought it was something petty before the kidnap at the Game Centre,” 

                “Right,” Dawn nodded her head. “After the kidnap, Bailey asked me why I coincidentally called you, Johnson. I said someone had to. Then she said that you were now on her hit list, because she couldn't risk anyone finding them out,”

              “So at the time, Jace, Parker, Jack and I were imprisoned in the house that they were camping out at. Remember where you found the second riddle? In a dumpster? That was a few blocks from where Bailey decided to go to. She refused to stay in the same place for over two weeks, due to her fear of getting caught,”

            “Also, she personally cut my hair just so that if we were ever caught, I would take her place and be arrested since we looked like twins. She threatened me, telling me that if I didn't listen to her, she would find a way to hunt me down and kill me herself. I knew she was not joking or messing around,” Dawn sighed as she felt her once long and luscious hair.

                “You may be wondering how I always knew Bailey's next location and strategically placed the riddles in accordance to this. Well, the answer is Bailey would tell me. She confided me the most out of everyone there because I'm her sister and I wouldn't go and stab her behind her back. She was right to trust me. I can't ever do that to her even after all she's done to me,”

              “Occasionally, one of Bailey's goons would tell us what Bailey wanted to do because they would use us either as a distraction or bait. We would have to obey or else it was the life on the line. With Bailey's unstable state of mind, you wouldn't object. Especially after she shot Isabella,”

               “Bailey killed Isabella?” Perez asked, her mouth forming an ‘o’.

               “Yes. After abducting her from the mall, she brought Isabella to where the four of us — Jace, Parker, Jack and I — were. Isabella tried to put up a fight, even though we warned her several times not to object to Bailey's orders,”

               “There was a point that Bailey got so tired of hearing her that she gagged us. Despite that, Isabella would still test her luck with Bailey and she ended up with one bullet in her head and the other in her chest two days after she had been kidnapped,”

            “Bailey hates to be defied by anybody, myself included. She has this strange thing where she would just walk around in the room we were held in with a voice recorder and she would record herself speaking,”

              “She would talk about the most bizarre yet profound things about how everyone's life is like a sitcom, or how we are all stars of our own stories. It was crazy talk. We all thought she was insane, though we would never say it out loud,”

               “There were also times she or someone else would come in to torture us all. That explains all my bruises and scars. Compared to what they did to everyone else, I have the least scars and bruises on me. Bailey needed me for her backup plan if she ever got caught, so they would only hit me if I tried to defend anyone they would strike me,”

               “We were all tortured in the presence of one another and it was horrible, watching someone inflict harm on the people you care about and yet you can do nothing to stop it. The worst part was that they would do it just for fun. Their twisted form of entertainment. That was what D.A.B was originally for. To entertain Bailey and her friends until they found something new to do,”

              “After Isabella's death, finally Bailey was able to find Madison. Kidnapped her at the concert,” She shifted her gaze to Johnson. “I was the one who punched you in the face, Johnson. I'm sorry. I was made to take Madison because, well, her kidnapping was more personal to Bailey and I so we were the ones in charge of it,”

                “Even though Bailey is stronger, I am much more athletic than she is. But looking at my current condition, you can't even tell. We would barely be given anything to eat. Since Bailey nor anyone else in D.A.B can cook a decent meal, that was where Parker and I came in,”

               “I am almost sure why they were holding Parker ransom was because he, and I, could both cook something consumable to eat. Bailey didn't trust Madison behind the cooker. The strange thing is that Parker's ransom was paid for almost immediately after the kidnapping of the Game Center, but Bailey didn't let him go. If we ordered anything, it would be very risky because their identity could be revealed,”

               “As for Jack, he was still being held because of his status as the Prime Minister's son. As for Jace, I have no idea why she didn't kill him like the way she did with Isabella. Both boys proved to be useful to me though. Madison knew your phone number, Johnson, by heart and Jack carried a mobile phone with him when he was kidnapped,”

               “He hid it because if they found it, they would destroy it since it can be tracked down to their location. We would be very careful with when we would use it because Bailey and her gang would watch us around the clock,”

                “There were brief intermissions, however, at certain points of the day and we used it to our advantage. The boys would come up with the riddles and I would speak because you already knew my voice, Johnson. However, I had to improvise the Shakesperian riddle there was because you were asking several questions, Johnson,”

             “Bailey said she was going to kill you and your partner, Johnson. She left the three of us but she took Madison and Parker along with her, for reasons that I do not know,”

            “When she returned with you and your partner, Johnson, hot on her trail, I couldn't believe it. I thought that we were saved. But at the back of the house that we were in, there was an escape route. The room at the end of the hall on the second floor, when opened, reveals a ladder from which one can leave from. Below, there were three cars, if I remember correctly, parked in case of emergencies,”

              “The three of us were shoved along but Bailey grabbed my collar, pulling me back. Jace was frantic. He started to struggle but he was knocked out. So was Jack. I didn't know what Bailey was going to do with me. I was livid. Paralysed. Mortified,”

              “And then she threw me over, with the flick of her wrist. My whole life flashed before my eyes. I closed my eyes, bracing myself for the impact when you caught me, Johnson,”

            She took a deep breath. “I don't know how to ever repay you. For figuring out the riddles—”

            “I can't take credit for that. I got some help from my partner Perez,” Johnson nodded at the brunette seated next to the blonde.

              “Thank you, Perez,” Dawn squeezed her hand gratefully. “Also, for coming to our aid. For trusting my riddles. For everything. I would be dead by now if it weren't for both of you. Thank you. Really,” 

               It was then Johnson realised why he was an investigator. There was no better feeling than helping someone out. Saving a life. For being someone's source of faith, hope and light in a world spiralling out of control.

               “You're welcome. We are so glad that you are alright. We owe you and your friends a big thank you, as well,” Johnson smiled. “If it weren't for you, we would be at a dead end. When I first received this case, the file was close to empty. I was frustrated because I had no good leads. And then you called, changing all of that,”

              “That's what family is for, right?” Dawn let out a soft chuckle. “We usually have each other's backs,”

            “Right. We are family,” Johnson chuckled, too. Both the male investigator and the beauteous blonde ducked their heads away, thinking about Bailey.

               Perez couldn't help but think how similar they were. “What is Bailey's next move? ”

              Dawn's face hardened. “Since she hasn't gotten either of the ransoms from Jack's parents, she's planning on assassinating the Prime Minister by the end of this week,”