Chapter 15
CHAPTER
FIFTEEN
“What happened?” Rowan barked at the floor officer in charge.
“Wrists were cut,” Lincoln Barnes answered, looking distraught. “We didn’t realize it was time to put her on watch again. What’s-his-face said she was good…” He trailed off, staring at the body, his face pale. Rowan tried to remember how long he’d been there, if he’d seen anything like this before.
“She was good,” Rowan snapped, grabbing the paperwork out of his hands to see that he hadn’t even filled it out yet. “Got anyone reviewing the footage?”
“Grimes.”
Rowan nodded. “Good.” Then she thrust the papers back into his hands. “Get this shit filled out.”
The best thing right now was to keep him busy.
She knew he was blaming himself; the man was always too soft, but the patients liked him.
Despite all their efforts to prevent this sort of thing, it did happen.
Though, Rowan suspected that this wasn’t what it looked like.
The weight of the bloodied knife sat heavy in her pocket.
It didn’t take long for the cops to show up with the paramedics in tow.
Rowan instructed Barnes to talk to them since he’d been there from the start.
Apparently she’d still been alive—just barely.
The poor thing had been lying there for hours, slowly bleeding out with no one to help.
All because Rowan had been too distracted with Delilah to run her usual camera check.
If she hadn’t deviated from her schedule, she would’ve caught that there was something off about Mariana’s camera.
And she knew there had to be something wrong with it because none of her guards would fail to notice something like this.
If Rowan hadn’t let herself get so caught up in Delilah’s game, an innocent woman wouldn’t have died.
The memory of the look on Delilah’s face while she watched Rowan and Mariana talk flashed through her mind. It was all Rowan’s fault.
She slowly backed out of the room, away from the chaos. Then she remembered the knife in her pocket and she swallowed, approaching the small Asian woman wearing a detective’s badge and barking orders.
“I might have evidence,” Rowan said, interrupting the woman who frowned before waving her off.
“Evidence?” she asked in a harsh voice. “For a suicide?”
“Another patient had this in their possession.” Rowan held out the knife. The detective wrinkled her nose before snapping at someone else to collect it. “There’s blood on it,” Rowan added uselessly.
“Thanks.” The detective nodded. “We’ll test it.” She moved away, dismissing Rowan, but something made her grab the woman’s arm, stopping her.
“Can you—” She hesitated. “Can you let me know what you find?”
“Who are you?” The woman frowned.
“Ah, sorry. I’m Rowan Aberdeen. Head of security here.”
“Detective Chen.” She nodded. “Yeah, I’ll have one of my guys reach out when the results come back.
But, to be completely honest, there’s no evidence that this is anything other than a suicide.
I’m sorry for your loss.” She started to turn away again, then stopped herself.
“Can you get me her next of kin? Would make my life easier.”
“Of course,” Rowan said, turning to Lincoln, who’d been watching the interaction with curiosity. “You got this?”
“Yeah, boss,” he said, giving her a mock salute that made her roll her eyes before he fled the room. Rowan wasn’t going to hover any further. She followed him quickly, turning to get up the stairs to the camera room.
“Move,” she ordered Grimes, who was sitting lazily, watching through the last several hours of footage. “I need to check something.”
She reached over him before he had a chance to react and then pulled up the last four hours of Delilah’s feed.
It showed her returning from her unsanctioned field trip, disappearing into the bathroom, and then returning to lie on her bed and stare at the camera for the next hour until Rowan entered the room.
She ground her teeth, switching the feed to footage from that morning for hallway two.
“Uh,” Grimes interrupted, “I already looked at that.”
“And?” she snapped, rewinding until she spotted Delilah walking past the room with her two guards in tow.
They didn’t stop. Delilah barely even glanced at the door as they passed.
She switched to the camera inside Mariana’s room, showing the woman pacing—something that Rowan knew she did on mornings when she was antsy.
Then, five minutes later, the feed cut out.
“The whole floor was out, ma’am,” Grimes said. “Think it must’ve been a malfunction or something.”
“A malfunction?” she snapped. “Conveniently timed to when Mariana was killed and Delilah claimed to have a knife on her?” He gawped at her, his eyes wide. She shook her head. Useless.
A ringing chime broke the stillness as they stared at the black screens, waiting for the feed to come back up. Rowan checked her phone and groaned when she saw Adele calling her. What now?
“Everything okay?” she asked upon answering.
“I need you to escort Ms. Watson to room 112.”
Rowan frowned, standing up and already walking to the door, barely waving at Grimes to carry on with the review. “Why?”
Adele’s sigh came through before her tired voice. “Her lawyer is coming.”
“Why the hell is her lawyer coming?”
“She had a weapon on her, didn’t she? The detective told me you handed one in, and I can only assume you found it on her and didn’t report it to me because you were too busy with the code blue.
” Rowan winced at the chastising tone and the sound of paper shuffling in the background.
“I had to contact her lawyer. Atkins, I think her name was. Anyway, she’ll be here soon.
Delilah is supposed to meet her in a ‘neutral’ environment.
I’ve got a couple attendants clearing out 112 to make it more visitor friendly since she obviously can’t meet her lawyer in our visitation room. They’ll need privacy.”
“Fine. I’ll get her now.” Despite her grumbling, Rowan had already made it halfway to Delilah’s room by the time the conversation ended. Her adrenaline pumped faster the closer she got.