Short stories, prompts

Did I really win? 1: I promise...

He was not going to lose and he knew it. There was definitely no way he, the most reputable homicide detective in the entire department, could not crack this case. After all, he was used to studying patterns and knew what the minds of these murderers looked like. He knew more than enough about it and he knew he was following a serial killer when he got a cursive signature carved right over the victims' hearts. These victims used to be naked when revealed to the public eye.

The victims had more than enough similarities to them than just the signatures of their killer though. The signatured name was simple: The Carver. Along with the signature, another similarity was that the victims were all young girls, between sixteen to seventeen years old, all young and beautiful, with brownish golden skin, black hair and black eyes. Along with the carving at the chest, they would also have a fine carving on their left ring fingers, tiny but still there, as if it was a ring tattoo. It said Whore.

As he was studying the profiles of the victims, he got a call from his wife. Why was she calling now? Did she not know that he was working on a very important case? He mindlessly declined the call, continuing to study the case. However, his phone started ringing again. Was there an emergency? He picked up the call, only to hear heavy breathing on the other line.

He frowned and asked on the phone, "Hello, Maya, you there darling?"

A frightened voice of Maya was heard from her end as she said desperately, frightened, "O-Our daughter, Nisha, I had gone to her school after she did not arrive with the school bus but she was nowhere to be found. Her friends said that she did not attend the school at all. I asked her friends, really asked, to make sure that she was not spending time with a secret boyfriend or anything but her friends really had no clue. They claimed to have received the same message from Nisha, that she had caught a stomach bug and was thus not attending the school."

Fear gripped his heart as he realised what was happening. He tried to remember his daughter Nisha, the seventeen years old princess of his, with black hair and black eyes. Why would the serial killer go after her? The serial killers would normally go after fatherless children. He was in the police. Why did it have to be his daughter instead of someone else's?

His body started trembling as he fell on the ground, sobbing badly. How did this happen? Since when did he become a hunter of the criminal to a father whose daughter might become a victim of the criminal? He took deep breaths. He had to be rest assured, nothing was wrong, not yet. She could have just gone anywhere.

Gulping some saliva down his dry throat, he told his wife, "Love, I will find her and I will bring her home safe, I promise..."