“But he got caught in the act,” Erica, another junior nurse, said. “Why do they need DNA to arrest him?”

“Maybe because there was no video evidence?” someone said.

“Yeah, but the cops brought him in here,” another answered. “And the victim and a separate witness both identified him.”

We got into a heated whisper-debate about what happened that night, each of us sharing the knowledge we’d gleaned from the cops, hospital admin, and our own late-night Google searches and crime show binges. In the end, none of us had law degrees, so it was all speculation, and by the end of it, we only had more questions than the answers we’d been after.

“Okay, but why is he here?” I asked once we’d calmed down.

Erica clicked the computer mouse and leaned in to read the screen. “One of the victim’s brothers tracked him down in a bar after seeing a Snapchat.”

I shook my head. “No. I mean, why is he still here? The faster we treat him, the faster we can send him back out so the brother can finish him off.”

“No one wants to help him,” Tanya said.

I glanced around the station. All women. Usually, we had several male coworkers on each shift as patients sometimes had preferences for whom they wanted to treat them.

“It’s only Amit on shift right now,” Brinley said, catching my confusion. “Zach called in sick, and Kevin won’t be in for another hour.”

Amit was a squat, barrel-chested Indian-American man in his early 30s who could deadlift twice his body weight. He was great with our “problem patients” because they usually took one look at his straining muscles and thought better of their bad behavior.

Tanya leaned over the station desk to grab a clipboard off it. “We’re waiting for him to get done in room three, and then we’re sending him over.”

I shook my head. That would be a while. The patient in three was barely stable.

“I’ll do it,” I said.

Brinley sucked in a breath.

Tanya grabbed my arm. “Aly, no.”

I pulled out of her grip and turned to face my coworkers. “I’ll be fine. You guys can see me, and yesterday, I learned how to punch in someone’s windpipe in my martial arts class.” I grinned, wrapping myself in false bravado. “Maybe I’ll get a chance to test it out.”

Tanya didn’t look convinced. “I’m coming with you.”

I held up a hand, halting her when she made to take a step toward me. Tanya never treated sexual predators. Ever. There was a reason for her reticence that she’d only hinted at before, but it was enough for me to get the gist, and I’d be damned if that man got a chance to retraumatize her by saying or doing something terrible in her presence.

“I got this,” I said.

A line formed between Tanya’s brows as she frowned at me, and her dark eyes looked troubled. “You’ll step away if he gets inappropriate and let Amit handle him.”

I nodded. It wasn’t a question from my friend but an order from a superior.

She eyed me for a long moment before blowing out a breath. “Fine. But we’re watching.”

“Good,” I said, turning on my heel, glad I had backup ready to intervene.

The phone started ringing as I walked away, and I heard Erica answer it. “Wait, come back! There’s a man on the line for you!”

“Tell him I’m fine,” I called over my shoulder.

Josh must have hacked into the hospital again and saw what I was about to do. I almost smiled. He said he’d be watching me, but it was nice to have it confirmed. It was like having my very own guardian angel keeping tabs on my welfare, and it made me feel safe in a way that not even the hoard of co-workers at my back did.

I was sure I would have been okay, even without such close supervision. The man I was about to treat wasn’t even the worst I’d ever seen. Something most “civilians” didn’t realize was that when people in jail got hurt or sick, they went to the hospital just like everyone else. Last year, I’d treated a man with a stab wound who’d been convicted of brutally murdering two women. He’d been strapped to the bed, and there had been two correctional officers in the room with me the whole time I’d seen him, but I still felt unsafe in his presence.

I would never forget the look in his eyes when he’d caught sight of me. It was inhuman, something I’d never seen before that was somehow completely dead and feverishly alive at the same time. He looked like he was starving, but not for food. It was the gnawing kind of starvation that hollowed you out until all that was left was the hunger.

The second I’d stepped out of his room, I’d turned toward the cop guarding the door and told him I didn’t think that man had only killed two women. The cop looked me dead in the eye and said, “Neither do we.”

I had nightmares for weeks afterward.

Nothing could get worse than that man, I thought. But as I approached the accused rapist and he turned to look at me, I wondered if I was about to be proven wrong.

Up close, he had the same eyes as the suspected serial killer, even though his were brown and the murderer’s had been blue. They were dead and alive and wholly inhuman. I knew with certainty that I was looking into the eyes of a predator, the eyes of someone who didn’t see me as a being with agency of my own but as a plaything put on this earth for their entertainment. It made me want to crawl out of my skin, but I pulled my professional façade on and brandished it like a shield. The faster I treated him and sent him on his way, the better.

I skipped the usual pleasantries and got straight to business, giving the bed he reclined on a wide birth as I went to the pulse oximeter, keeping myself half turned toward him so if he tried to make a move, I’d see it coming.

“Hello, I’m treating you tonight,” I said, with almost no inflection because fuck him.

“And your name would be?” he asked, his voice low and pleasant and all the more unnerving because of who it was coming out of.

“Nurse Hanover,” I said. It was the generic name we gave patients when we didn’t feel comfortable offering them our real ones, and it would even go on his discharge paperwork when he was released, so he couldn’t track me down afterward. We’d had a few incidents after patients found their nurses outside of work, one of which ended very badly, and now the hospital did its best to try and protect us.

“Do you have a first name?” he asked, a teasing note in his voice.

“Nope,” I shot back. “Just Hanover. Like Madonna or Cher.”

He chuckled, and the sound made me want to puke. Because it was infectious. If I’d heard it in a bar, I would have turned to see who was laughing, and it made me think of how charming some people with personality disorders could be.

I lifted the pulse reader from the machine and asked him to hold out his finger, careful not to touch him when I clamped it on. I let it work its magic, stepping away to pull his chart up on the nearby computer. Amit’s name was on it, so he must have been the one to settle this creep in before getting called away to help the patient in room three.

The rapist’s name was Bradley Bluhm, and if he was of any relation to the Bluhms that one of the tallest skyscrapers in the city was named after, he didn’t just come from money; his family was worth billions. No wonder they found some way to bribe, coerce, or pay for him to avoid arrest. Laws didn’t apply to the uber-rich, only to those without the money or means to subvert them.

Brad’s chart told me he’d probably need stitches on his forehead and an x-ray of his ribs, but I still had to ask him what happened and get him to describe his injuries. I really didn’t want to, so I clicked around on the computer for a while longer as the heart monitor pinged out a slow, steady rhythm. The bastard was staring straight at me. Hadn’t stopped since I’d approached. I could see him turned my way out of the corner of my eye and feel his gaze tracing over me like it was corporeal.