Chapter 15

Ethan stared down at Jenna's sleeping form knowing she was going to be pissed when she woke. He couldn't stay in her apartment; he had to work, just as she did. He leaned down, brushing her bangs off of her forehead and let his lips linger gently against her skin for an instant.

"I love you, Jenna."

She mumbled something in her sleep, turning her face up to his, her eyes fluttering before exhaustion pulled her back down. She cuddled into the comforter, reaching out in her sleep and gathering the pillow he'd used against her. He smiled as she buried her face in it and with one more gentle kiss, this time on her bare shoulder he turned to leave the apartment.

His car was in the lot where he'd left it and he hopped in, knowing he should stop at home and change. Instead, he decided to use the lockers at work, he kept extra clothes there, and he could always wear scrubs if need be.

But what waited for him at the hospital? Would there be scores of reporters like in all the cop dramas he'd ever seen. Could they have gotten his name from "an inside source" at the police station? Would he even have a job when he got there?

Pulling into the doctors' lot, he breathed a sigh of relief. There didn't seem to be any unusual activity around the hospital. There was the usual hubbub of noise and sirens, a helicopter sat on the lawn, one of the life flights, it rotors still. A steady stream of traffic ran both in and out of the hospital. Just like every other day. Then why did he feel like something was going to happen?

Stopping at security to report his missing badge and to get a new one took only a few minutes. From there, he headed down to the doctors' lounge and locker rooms, determined to get cleaned up before he started work.

The shower felt fantastic, helping to rid the last of his fatigue. He wrapped a towel around his waist, shaking his dark head to help dry his hair before leaving the shower to head to his locker. On the other side of a short wall were two women who didn't see him as he walked by, too engrossed in their conversation to notice.

"Did you see the paper this morning?"

"Yeah, that pervert got another one. When are the cops going to do something about it?"

"I don't know what you're worried about, you're a blonde. He only goes after dark haired women with really short hair like mine."

"Yeah, but honey, unless you plan to lose a hundred or so pounds, I don't think you got much to worry about either. This pervert's got a type."

"And I don't want to be it, so I'll stay the way I am, thank you very much."

Ethan drew the towel from around his stomach and shook his head. It was all anyone was talking about. It would probably be all he heard about today. And if they ever found out his hospital badge was found folded into the last victim's clothes, he shook his head again, not wanting to even think of the mayhem that would cause.

He dressed in scrubs, throwing on the other pair of shoes he kept in his locker as just in cases. He couldn't count all of the kids and adults he'd had that had vomited on his shoes, or his clothes, so he kept a change of each here. Throwing on his lab coat, he pinned his badge securely on the collar, throwing his stethoscope around his neck and brushing his still damp, shaggy hair back from his face, he went to start his day.

The Emergency Room wasn't too crowded when he got there, a couple of kids with ear infections, one older man who came in with chest pains, they had him in the glass room where they could keep an eye on him. Another bed in the same room contained a woman with a kidney stone whose blood pressure had skyrocketed with the pain. She was being admitted, but they were waiting on a room.

Ethan stopped at the desk, picking up the list of charts and flicking through it. He made small talk with the nurse that was there, a night shift nurse who was covering for day shift, she was yawning her way through the stack of files that needed checking.

He heard the ambulance, the wild scream of its siren, before he saw it backing into the bay. Dropping the list back on the desk he hurried to the doors, reaching them just as the ambulance driver threw the vehicle into park and jumped out to help unload their charge.

"What we got?" Ethan called, hitting the button that held the doors open.

"Twenty-four year old woman, attacked, raped and beaten, then sliced open with a knife. She's bad, doc." The first ambulance attendant looked down on the small woman on the gurney, glad that she'd passed out. When they'd gotten to the scene, she'd been awake, her mouth opened, her eyes glazed as she tried to scream. But whatever monster that had done this had taken care of that, crushing her voice box so that all that would escape were whimpers.

"She's got a broken leg, ribs, and we think her voice box was crushed, but those are minor compared to what he did with the knife."

"What did he do?" Ethan asked, even as he ran along beside the gurney directing them into a curtained area.

"You have to see it, doc," the EMT said. "You just have to see it."

They lifted the girl from the gurney easily between the four of them, as the other nurses started to stream into the room to help. Her clothes were already mostly gone, bare shreds of fabric hanging from around her wrists, the waistband of her red skirt still around her waist, the fabric under it gone.

Her body was a mass of bruises, ugly black marks that were welted and swollen, especially around her throat. There was a perfect imprint of a hand print there.

"We had to intubate. She wasn't breathing when we got there."

But the worst of it was across her stomach under the bloody gauze and thick pad they'd wrapped there. Ethan lifted it gently, grateful to see that the bleeding had almost stopped. Cutting through the pad, he heard one of the nurse's gasp and he stood there, his heart in his throat, his mind frozen. Across her stomach, etched into her flesh by the blade of a knife in the hand of a killer was a single word. A name, Jenna.

"Who found her?" he asked hoarsely.

"I don't know, there was a cop with her when we got there. He was plain clothes but we didn't ask for identification or anything. We was anxious to get her back here."

"A cop? Big guy? Blonde hair?"

"Yeah, that sounds about right." He nodded to Ethan and pushed his gurney out of the room, his partner behind him.

"Oh God," Ethan whispered. "Jenna!"

Jenna woke slowly, her mind still fuzzy from lack of sleep. Her hand slid out along the smooth line of her sheet, searching for Ethan's warm body. She could take another hour, she decided. Another hour in bed with Ethan would get her ready for the day ahead. But a frown marred her countenance as her hand felt nothing but bed.