You going to be okay by yourself for a bit? he asked.

Yes, Ill manage without you.

He gave her a sarcastic wink and headed out of the door. Standing in the conference room by herself, it was far too tempting to take one of the chairs and just zone outto let the weight of the last twenty-four hours or so melt off of her. But she meant what shed just told the officersthat based on the way this killer was behaving, they had so move as if they thought he would kill tonight as well.

She spent the next several minutes working with the receptionist of the precinct to procure a laptop, WiFi and internal server access, and a workspace. As all of that was being set up, Rachel placed a call to the clinic and, after a tense conversation with a manager and giving her badge number, got a full list of the staff members that worked at Regency Fertility Clinic. She hated the way she felt when she got off of the phone. Before this case was over, every single employee of that clinic was going to always be suspicious of the FBI or any other branch of law enforcement.

Working on a newer model of laptop at a cubicle near the back of what she supposed was meant to be the station bullpen, Rachel ran background checks on each employee. It took some getting used to the layout of the precincts servers but it came pretty easily. When she was done about an hour and a half later, shed discovered pretty much what shed expected: exactly nothing. There were a few speeding tickets and one restraining order placed by one of the nurses, but nothing substantial.

When her options were exhausted, she looked to the list of names the clinic had sent over. Thirty-one employees, twenty-six of which were women. And while they all had squeaky clean records, that was not quite enough to sway Rachels initial thoughtthat there might be an employee working with the killer, passing along the names of women getting these fertility treatments.

It was a terrible assumption to jump to, but it was the only thing that made sense so far. Besides, right now assumptions were all she had to work with. It was just one of the many ways the killer currently had a massive upper hand.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Rachel was digging through records for the past three years, looking for any cases in which pregnant women had been the target of crimes, when her phone rang. When she saw it was Peter, she almost ignored it. But she never ignored his calls unless she was in a position where her phone was on silent mode. She wasnt sure why her heart was pounding nervously when she answered it. Was keeping this secret from him going to cause her to feel this nervous and guilty every time they spoke?

Hey, Peter, she answered.