The Blackout Girl ✔️

chapter six

Chapter Six

Lexi had been sitting in the compact room for a couple of hours now. She wondered if they were going to leave her there all night or if Agent Price would come back in for another round of brutal questioning. Her wrists had begun to hurt and her body was sore from being fixed in a rigid position. On top of that, she had to use the restroom and there was no one around her to ask.

She looked around again. She'd done that a few times to save her from getting a crick in her neck, and she hoped something might change each time she did it. Frankly, she probably looked like a lost kid in a grocery store, but who cared?

Her family was probably worried. She hated that she couldn't contact them and offer some reassurance. On second thought, she didn't have much reassurance to provide. She was starting to doubt her own innocence. Price had been ruthless with her. Perhaps he had a right to be. She was a suspect, and a suspect who wasn't sure she had any defense at that.

Lexi began to grind her teeth, staring at the camera mounted on the wall. The small, blinking red light meant it was on and they could still see her. She sighed, wishing she had at least some privacy. This was just cruel.

She was so tired. Her head was throbbing, heavy from trying to stay awake for too long. She didn't have it in her to fight much more. She was well past the twenty-four hour mark, and her brain could only be pushed so far before it needed to give in. The body requires sleep to function, and Lexi couldn't deny herself such a basic need and expect to be fine.

Slowly, she lowered her cheek onto her folded hands and closed her eyes.

What Lexi didn't know was that, as she passed out, Nolan and Kaytee stood outside, watching her.

"Her parents are here," Kaytee said. "Dre let me know a little while ago. They're shaken up."

"So is she," Nolan pointed out, gesturing in her direction.

"She must be exhausted. Hell, we all are."

Nolan agreed. It wasn't even the lack of rest that made this case draining; it was the frustration, the trails gone cold, the dead ends. The violent crimes task force was usually more straightforward. They handled gang violence and robberies, the stuff that was easy to close in on. The answers were always clear and there were rarely surprises.

He was new, so this was his first serial killer. He was sure the rest of the team had seen a few sporadically, but they were infrequent, and not usually something within their wheelhouse. With this, he felt so lost and directionless.

The academy taught him about killers in the abstract. They discussed Bundy and Dahmer—the famous ones that changed profiling and investigating for good. The problem was, a note on a page was very different from a real person with victims from the community.

"How are you?" Kaytee asked him.

"Fine," he answered. "Why do you ask?"

She lifted a shoulder. "I think sometimes we forget to check up on each other."

He found himself convinced that she was the only one who would think to question how he was doing. They were all busy. It wasn't that no one cared, but rather that the hustle and bustle left no room for small talk.

"How did you wind up in the FBI?" he wondered aloud. "I mean, come on, Tee, you're so..."

"So...?"

"So nice," he finished. "Dre is tough and Price is a hard-ass and Darren is a walking enigma and then there's you."

"Then there's me," she echoed. "We all have our reasons, Nolan. Mine is a story for another day."