“I don’t recognize one person on that tape you guys. No one looks familiar, and the feed is so grainy and shadowy, I couldn’t even tell you for sure if one of them is someone I know.”

“I thought that might be the case. Their equipment is outdated. I can’t event narrow it down with a fucking time stamp,” Freak growls, throwing something from his desk across the room.

“Okay let’s move to the files,” I tell Skye, needing to keep her focused.

“Have you heard from, Dragon?” she asks, worriedly.

“Doc, he’s not even been gone an hour. Give them time,” I tell her, trying to keep her calm, but inside, I’m worried. I got alarm bells ringing like a fucking church tower in my head. Something is off. I know it.

Skye sits down at the small table, and picks up the first folder.

“Judy? No way. She could never do this, and besides her house burned down, she’s been way too busy dealing with that.”

“We need to take a second, third, and fourth look at everyone, Skye. Judy was on break about the time Melissa disappeared. Maybe she took that time off, to kill her and dispose of the body.”

“I’m telling you there’s no way, Bull. And besides, you’re forgetting, I saw the pictures of Melissa…” she pauses to catch her breath, and I know she’s remembering. Thank God, she didn’t have to see it in person. It was much worse. “I saw the pictures, and it would take a man or a very big woman to accomplish that. Judy is tiny. A strong wind would blow her away.”

I nod because we’re all in agreement over that, I just wanted to make sure. “Okay, so the next one.”

“Dr. Douche,” she sighs, and it’s the first time I’ve really felt like laughing all day. “I mean he’s the one all of the signs point to, because he’s definitely psychotic.”

“And he might have been giving it to Melissa, but you did say she told the whole hospital about his inch worm.”

“Inch worm?” she gives me a weak smile, and I wink at her.

“Yeah. I mean it could be him. He just seems too…”

“Too what, sweetheart?”

“He is too bold and in your face? Like, I think he would attack first, and then try to be sneaky as hell to get out of it. He wouldn’t write cryptic notes and do things in the background.”

“Okay so we’ll put him in the maybe pile and go to the next.”

“Well, we can cross out Walter.”

“Fuck, no. He attacked you.”

“He’s not going to jeopardize his career to do something like this, and he’s too high brow. He thinks he’s better than everyone else,” she argues.

“You just described half the serial killers in America. My money is on, Walter-boy. He stays in the maybe pile.”

“You just don’t like him,” she argues, putting the file on top of Dr. Douche, as she so colorfully put it.

She goes through at least six more files, the security guards, cooks, nurses, and other doctors. We slowly rule those out. She stops when she comes on the next one.

“Buck…”

“The janitor I met the other day.”

“Yeah. He’s a nice guy, or seems to be. I don’t know him that well, I’d have a hard time believing he was the one, but…”

“But?”

“Well, he does have access to everything, and he’s in charge of cleaning the entire third wing, which is where my locker is.”

“So, he could get in and out without being noticed.”

“Yeah,” she says, sounding defeated.

“Buck, the janitor just became our chief suspect then. Hand me his folder, Skye and I’ll start doing more research while you go through the last one,” Freak tells her.

“You know out of the thousands of employees there’s not been that many files,” she says, handing the folder to Freak.

“Yeah, you should have seen it before Freak and the rest of us narrowed it down, Doc.”

She nods and looks up at me a little lost.

“What is it Doc?”

“I hate this. I hate suspecting that any of the people I’ve worked with could be capable of all of this.”

“I know, sweetheart. We need to lock this down, so we can put it behind us,” I tell her squeezing her hand. “Now go through the last one.”

“Alex…”

“Yeah, the floor nurse on the cardiac unit.”

“Why’d you choose, Alex?”

“Bull hasn’t seen that file yet, actually. We just added it to the suspect list, I’ve only discussed it with him,” Freak interjects, typing away on his computer.

“Why?” my girl asks, while I glance at the clock, wondering exactly why in the fuck we haven’t heard from Dragon.

“You told Bull you’d been getting Alex to go back and double check your orders, because you were afraid Dr. Eldridge and earlier, Melissa were setting you up.”

“Well, yeah. That’s because I trust Alex.”

“But, you said Alex hated Melissa.”

“Even more than I did,” Skye says.

“What was done to Melissa’s body, Doc. That required a lot of hate.”

Skye’s fingers move over the file in thought.

“Doc?”

“You know, now that I think about it. Alex is always around. He’s really quiet, but he’s always around…and his locker is just beside mine, so he could slip things in mine, and no one would even notice. Heck we’ve been at our lockers at the same time. He probably even knows my combination.”

“Wait. Alex is a he?” I ask.

“You really haven’t read this file,” Skye says.

“Well Freak, said…he was a nurse, so I just assumed.”

“You do know that a third of our nurses are males, right Bull?”

“There goes my fantasies about naughty nurses,” I grumble.

“You’re such an ass,” she says, but there’s humor in her voice. “Besides, the only fantasies you are allowed to have are playing doctor with yours truly.”

I start to respond, but before I can get a chance, the door slams open. Dragon, Hawk and Dancer are there and Dragon is pissed.

“There’s no fucking kid named Greg anywhere near your home, Skye. There’s not even one six streets over.”

I pull my woman up, and hold her to me, trying to will my strength into her body. Her hands grasp my arms and she looks up at me. Tears are streaming down her face, and she looks so scared and frail. I feel like I’ve been punched in the balls.

“Bull….”

“Yeah, sweetheart?”

“Alex’s last name?”

“Yeah?”

“It’s Gregory.”

Motherfucker.