“So they could still be in the building?” Jesse asks.
“It’s a possibility. Just stay with us,” I say as Matthew catches up to us. I know he’d normally work with Chris somewhere else, but he seems quite concerned about Jesse.
“Jesse… are you okay?” Matthew asks.
Jesse looks back at him and offers him an apologetic smile. “Yeah, everything’s fine.”
“Okay,” Matthew says, clearly not believing him, but tagging along anyway in case there’s something he can help with.
Liam is off on a mission, and I feel like a duckling trying to keep up.
“Is this… is this how it always is with him?” Jesse asks.
“Yes. I try to join in, but sometimes it’s impossible,” I say as I jog to keep up before Liam jerks to a stop. I slam into him and he catches me with ease even though I’m behind him.
“They wouldn’t have gone through this way. There’s too much traffic outside that door,” Liam decides.
“I have to assume they weren’t in regular clothes bringing her down here. They could have put her in a wheelchair and made it look like she’d fallen asleep. If the killer was dressed as a nurse or a doctor and someone who wasn’t part of the department saw it, they wouldn’t question it,” I say, pulling on some gloves and beginning to check the room. “You think they stepped in here?”
“Possibly,” Liam answers. “You might be onto something with the wheelchair.”
“Mr. Confidence doesn’t sound overly confident,” Matthew says as he also pulls on some gloves and starts combing the room. I pause when I look at the card reader and cock my head.
“Liam… there’s blood on the card reader. They might have passed through this door.”
Liam comes over to the card reader then cocks his head and backs up to look at the floor.
“I think Gabriel is right, it looks like a wheelchair went through here,” Matthew notes, showing us marks from the wheelchair in the freshly washed floor. The floor is no longer wet, but the marks left a small smudge.
“Why take the empty wheelchair?” I ask. “Doesn’t it become more noticeable if you’re pushing an empty wheelchair instead of simply walking out?”
“What if it wasn’t empty?” Liam asks thoughtfully. “What if they were pushing the killer out?”
“You think there were two of them?” Matthew questions.
Liam scans the keycard and steps out before hesitating when two nurses behind a nurse’s station immediately look over at him, confused why anyone would be coming through here at this time of night.
Liam brushes past me as he rushes back to the operating room. When we reach it, Michaels looks up at the door suddenly being flung open. It hits Donna, who’d been squatting down, and she goes tumbling.
A part of me questions if Liam is smiling inside over finally taking out Donna, but he’s too focused on the people in the room to even notice the glorious—for him—moment.
“You okay?” I ask while I help her up.
“He’s out to kill me, isn’t he?” Donna complains.
“Sorry, he just has an idea in his head, and you know how he gets when he fixates on something.”
“Sure do,” she grumbles as I hurry over to Liam, who is questioning one of the security staff.
“You’re talking about Breanna? She’s around here somewhere. I think she went off to see how they were coming along in the security room. I can call her,” a young man whose name tag reads “Richard” offers.
“Before you call her, how long has she worked here?” Liam asks Richard as he’s about to leave the room.
“Five or six years, maybe, why?”
He ignores that question, and the young man steps out. Liam turns to Matthew. “I want someone to find her.”
Matthew gives him a nod, and almost immediately Richard comes back. “I… asked over the radio if anyone has seen her… and umm… the guy at the front said she was directed to go outside to check the parking lot…”
