“Yes, it does. Right up until he disappears right after I end up in the morgue drawer. That doesn’t fit. But none of Martin’s behavior fits in with Catch Me. He’s been playing these twisted games with me, keeping me on my toes and constantly moving. What good would it do him to have me here for two days before he did anything? And what does any of this have to do with my mother? Remember, all this time, everything he’s done has been about my mother. He knows what happened to her, and he’s been trailing me along because he knows I want to know too. Bringing me here to see Greg and then stuffing me in the morgue and leaving me for dead while he traipses off on his own doesn’t fit with everything he’s done. Besides, I bet if you talked to HR, you’d find out that Martin has an exemplary attendance record,” I say.
“He hasn’t missed the days he’d need to drag you through his sick little circus,” Dean notes.
“So, Martin isn’t Catch Me. But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t know him and isn’t helping him,” Sam muses.
“Or my uncle.”
Just saying the word still burns on my lips, but I force it out. It’s my reality, and I have to deal with it. Pushing it to the back corners of my mind is just giving him more power. As long as I’m trying to find ways to not associate with him, I’m giving him control, and that’s the last thing he deserves. “He came here. He knew I was here. Catch Me is all about the next step. Everything is a stepping-stone. The bodies, the flowers, the postcard, the link. Everything leads to the next thing. But with Martin, there’s no next thing. He’s just gone. No taunt to chase him. No tiny tidbit of my history to make me want to keep going. No. This isn’t him. He might have brought me here, but my uncle has taken over now.”
“And you still don’t think they’re working together?” Sam asks.
“They could be,” I admit, getting up to my feet, “but if they were, we wouldn’t see all this back-and-forth whiplash. It seems almost like they’re working against each other. Catch Me is very precise. Very secretive. Too much of this has been left to chance for them to be the same.”
I move to head out of Greg’s room. Sam trades a quick look of concern with Bellamy. They think I don’t see it, but I do. “Where are you going?” she asks.
I roll my eyes. “Oh my god, B, I’m fine. Look, I’m on my feet. No issues.” I spread my arms up and wide to show them I can move. “Now come on. We need to find any cameras in this hospital that might have caught where Martin went when he left. We need to find every camera we can and try to piece together what happened between me getting coffee and Dean pulling me out of the deep freezer,” I explain.
“There aren’t any on this floor because of the security clearing, but there have to be some somewhere. Most emergency rooms have them. Exits. Maternity wards,” notes Eric.
We get to the nurse’s station, and Amelia, one of the nurses on duty, looks at me with teary eyes.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispers. “I should have known.”
“You should have known what?” I ask.
“When Martin was changing the linens, I should have known something was wrong, but I didn’t question it.”
She starts crying. I walk around the desk and through the gap that leads into the corral-like area where the nurses congregate and work when they aren’t with patients. Crouching down beside her, I wrap my arm around her shoulders.
“Amelia, I need you to tell me what you’re talking about. What about Martin changing the linens was strange? Isn’t that something he regularly does?”
“Yes,” she confirms, lifting her head and looking at me through a veil of tears across her almost black eyes. A lock of inky hair slips from the clip at the back of her head and slides down her cheek, making her brush it away. Almost instinctively, she reaches for a bottle of hand sanitizer and rubs it in. “But he only does empty rooms by himself. If there’s still a patient in the room, we make sure their linens are changed while they are getting a bath or participating in therapy outside of the room.”
“And if they can’t move?” I ask. “Like Greg?”
“Then he has to have someone help. At least one other person helps maneuver the patient so the linens can be put in place. Earlier today, I was so busy. The entire nursing staff was. When I noticed him going toward Greg’s room with a laundry cart, I asked if he needed my help, but he said he was fine. I had so many other things to do; I just accepted it as a blessing. It would make things so much easier for all of us. He went in, and he came out just a few minutes later. The cart had balled up linens in it like always.”
“Holy shit,” I gasp, looking over at Sam. “He El Chapo’ed me.”
“You said you woke up on a gurney.”
“It was just for a few seconds, but that’s what it felt like. I was lying down on my back and could feel it rolling.”
“You wouldn’t be able to fit lying down in one of the laundry carts,” Dean points out. “It’s not long enough.”
“So, Martin stuffed me in the cart, covered me with sheets, then transferred me to the gurney? How could he do that without someone noticing?”
“Where do the orderlies bring the carts of laundry?” Bellamy asks.
“Some go to the laundry facility at the bottom of the hospital, and some are shipped out for laundering.”
“Did you see him again after he left Greg’s room?” I ask.
“He came back up,” Amelia confirms. “Just like always. Some of the patients are on different eating schedules, and
