The look on her face holds still. She takes a gulping breath and turns her face away as she wipes her nose. She soaks up her tears with a tissue. Her voice turns husky. “Why would I want to do that?”

“I don’t know,” he murmurs. “Maybe so you’ll see that he isn’t dead. Why don’t you tell me?”

She looks at him. “I shouldn’t let you do this to me.”

Aaron walks to the wheelchair parked in the corner of the room. He loosens the brakes, pulls it back from the wall.

Emily blows her nose. She wipes her eyes with her fingers. “If I tell you no, are you going to push it?”

He pauses and shakes his head. His face is remote and hard to read. “No.”

“All right.” She tosses the tissue into the wastebasket. “Let me brush my hair. Do I have a brush?”

“Do you have one in your purse?”

She nods.

He opens the plain wooden cabinet. He pulls out a floppy cloth bag and snaps it open. He paws through it, finds a small brush and tosses it to her. Emily picks it up and pulls it through her hair, the scrape of soft bristles loud in the heavy silence. She gropes her way through the tangles. Aaron finds a covered elastic and hands it to her. She takes it, gathers up her hair, twists it into the elastic’s loop. She pulls until its tight. She plucks another tissue and uses it to clean up her face.

“I see they’ve taken your IV out.”

Emily glances at her bandaged hand. “Yeah. I’m off the telemetry too.” She looks up at him. “I guess I’m all right.”

He brings the wheelchair up alongside the bed. “Do you need help?”

“No.” She pushes her sheets aside and swings her legs over the edge. “I probably don’t need the ride. I could walk.”

He takes a folded blanket out of the cabinet. “Here. To cover your legs.”

Emily stands up, wincing at the cold floor. She turns and settles her ass into the vinyl seat. She opens the blanket and spreads it over her lap, tucking the edges underneath her hips. Aaron circles around and drops onto one knee, folding the blanket around her feet.
“I think this will work,” he says. “If not, then…I don’t know.”

Emily puts her hands on her lap. “It will be fine. I’ll just pull it up if it comes loose. Are you sure about doing this?”

He stands and walks around in back of the chair. His hands curl around the handles. “I’m sure.”

She sighs. “Okay, then.”

He wheels her out into the hallway. It’s bright, windows set at either end and the blinds slanted just enough to allow a flood of sunlight. The walls hold framed photographs of rose-covered cottages, fog-shrouded seascapes, still-lifes of shells and starfish and abandoned piers. The color scheme is warm and pastel, ivory and gold. Emily hears beeping as she passes different rooms, an old man coughing, the soft pleasant tone of a call bell. They wheel past the nurse’s station. The nurses nod.

“The nurses know where you’re taking me,” she says.

Aaron nods. “Yes.”

She turns her head, leans it back to look at him. “You knew you were going to do this.”

He pushes her to the elevator. He leans over, presses the arrow pointing up. “Yeah.”

“This is where I should tell you to turn this fucking chair around.”

The doors slide open. “But you won’t.”

“What are you thinking about right now?”

He rolls her inside. “I’m not thinking.” He presses a button. “I’m following an instinct.”

The doors trundle closed. Emily feels the gears engage, the slight drop in her stomach as the elevator begins to rise. “Well. When you put it that way.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Her voice is kind. “What exactly do you think is going on here, Aaron?”

The elevator stops. The doors open and he steps backwards, pulling her out and into a cool green hallway. This one has pictures of leaves, color illustrations like something found in an old-fashioned journal of botany.

“I think you’re lying to me.” Aaron turns her around. “I don’t know where. I can’t separate the lies from the truth.” He walks. The wheels turn. “It all sounds the same.”

At the end of the hallway are police, two of them, sitting on either side of an open door in visitors’ chairs. Both of them look old, toughened up by the work. They’re drinking coffee out of fancy paper cups. At sight of Aaron they straighten up. One of them nods.

“Agent Hotchner.”

Aaron stops. “Any change?”

“Not that I can see.”

Emily leans over her lap and tries to peer around the doorframe.

“He awake?”

“Yeah.” Thick Boston accent. “He’s not talking, though.”

The beep emanating from George’s room is slow and steady. Emily closes her eyes and listens for the sound of his breath.

“All right.”

The two cops scoot their chairs aside. Aaron pulls back a little, reorienting the chair, and he steers her between them. Emily rolls into a room where the shades are drawn.

She raises her voice. “Why hasn’t anyone opened the window?”

The burlier of the two cops peers around the doorframe. “No one asked?”

She cranes her neck and looks over her shoulder. “Well, I’m asking.”

Aaron presses his lips together, exhales through his nose, and leaves her chair in the center of the room. He walks to the window, opening the blinds. He tugs them up, pushes on the sash just enough to let in a breath of outside air. Emily grips the rings on the wheels and rolls herself forward. The breeze moves along the side her face, smelling of wet pavement and new roses.

George’s head turns on the pillow. The beeps speed up just a touch. She watches his gaze pull into focus, feels it sharpen along the lines of her face. Her breath changes. There’s a faint clink. His fingers curl. Emily glances at the cuff connecting him to the bedrail. She turns her chin toward the window and keeps her eyes on George’s face.

She raises her voice. “Are you getting what you want?”

Behind her, quiet and beside the window: “Yes.”

“Why don’t you tell me what to do.” George looks into her eyes. She feels the skin of her mouth redden, the insides of her lips lifting apart. “I’ll do it.”

“It’s not all about you, Emily.”

A corner of George’s mouth turns up. He keeps his eyes on hers. “I’m flattered.”

Emily glances at his wrist.

Aaron moves around the perimeter of the room, the slight disturbance in the air tickling the hairs on her nape. His voice slides down into a soft growl. “Why couldn’t you do it?”

George looks at Emily’s mouth. “What are you doing here, Agent Hotchner?”

He pushes calm words through a tight jaw. “There’s a case.”

George repositions his head, his eyes roaming up over Emily’s face. “Shouldn’t you be doing your job?”

“This is my job.”

A small smile flashes across his mouth. He looks at Emily and his attention stretches out inside her gaze. His voice deepens, hits gravel. “You really get paid those big big bucks of yours to come into a hospital room and watch two people look at each other?”

“When one of those people is you?” Aaron circles around to the other side of the bed. He puts his hands on the bedrail. “Yes.”

“So…tell me.” George’s little smile hovers, turns lazy. He gives Emily a slow blink. “Whadda you see?”

“He sees a closed loop.” Her tone is crisp. “He can’t see inside it so he’s projecting what he wants to see on the outside, even though he’s trying not to. He’s projecting because it’s the only thing you can do with a closed loop.” She looks at George’s mouth. “The mind abhors a vacuum.”

“What I see is making me curious,” says Aaron, his voice hard-edged and warm. “I know why Emily’s looking at you, George, but what I can’t figure out is why you’re looking at her. Are you thinking about stabbing her?” He walks to the foot of the bed. “Are you thinking about watching her bleed? Are you laying there right now and looking into her face, wondering how you did such a shit job of killing her? I mean, she’s right here, in a wheelchair,” he murmurs. “Looking into your eyes and less than an arm’s reach away. All that soft white flesh under her hospital gown, just begging for a knife. Look at her breath.” Aaron steps behind Emily’s wheelchair. He moves his palms over her shoulders. “I can’t begin to imagine how frustrating that must be for you.”

Emily watches the words slide off George’s expression. He tilts his head back and his lids get weak. He crawls into her gaze, half-whispering, the look in his eyes stroking the underside of her skin. “Kiss me, Emily.”

Her whole body twitches.

“Pretty pathetic, George.” Aaron’s hands close on her upper arms. “Even for you.”

He holds her eyes like an animal, a crocodile waiting in still muddy waters and submerged up to the eyes. His upper arms twitch. The cuffs clink against the bedrails. She takes in a quick breath and looks at his hands and the tension in his forearms, the tendons popping on the undersides of his wrists. His ribs rise and fall. Emily looks at his face. Her eyes move into his and the swamp image melts from her mind. She sees stillness, flickers of hunger, a dark restless current of vulnerability; she sees him trapped inside his body and trembling up close to the surface, yearning to pass the boundaries of skin.

She moves and Aaron’s fingers tighten. His knuckles blanch. The flash of pain drops her back in her seat. Emily reaches back and pushes at his wrists, twists them until they go slack and she rises to her feet, her bones unsteady.

George’s gaze rises on the momentum of her body. Her spine shifts forward and the smooth turns of her joints slide beneath his face, shape the muscle into a raw and naked expression, drawing hunger up through his nerve endings. Emily touches his face, grounds herself in the roots of his hair, the texture of his skin. His mouth trembles open on a blast of breath. She looks at his mouth, tracing its shape with a light thumb. He looks into her eyes and licks her nail. She slides her nose up against his and his face slackens, eyelids drifting shut. He lifts his chin. She cradles the side of his face and turns, dropping down into a slow kiss. She inhales his ragged breath, engulfs his lips. The handcuff chains snap taut.

The edges in Aaron’s voice break. “Emily.”

The kiss sinks through layers of frantic breath. It tangles itself in a wet dance of membranes and George makes a sound, the boundaries of his voice smothered by the richness of flesh. Emily caresses his throat.

“Emily, that’s…that’s…” The strength drains out of Aaron’s voice. He reaches out, knuckles brushing the back of her head. “That’s enough.” He tightens his hand around the base of her ponytail. “Enough.”

Emily brushes her swollen lips against George’s. Their panting breaths mingle.

Aaron twists her hair. “Enough!”

Emily pulls back, straightens up. She turns and looks up at Aaron, her eyes dark as broken stone and bruised like flowers beaten by a hard rain.

“He can’t do anything,” she whispers. “He’s restrained.”

Aaron looks past her face and watches the smirk spread over George’s face. He meets Aaron’s eyes and the smirk splits into something lazy and sharklike.
Emily puts a hand on Aaron’s chest. His eyes snap away from George and look at the back of her hand like it’s a gun. He breathes like a man in a race.

“Don’t,” she murmurs, looking at the throbbing pulse in his neck. “I can see it in your face.” She looks up at him. “Don’t.”

“Hey…Aaron.” George shifts on the bed. His voice turns confidential. “Do her in the ass. She loves it.”

Aaron’s hands ball into tight pale fists. His muscles get hard and start to shake. Emily pushes the heel of her palm into his breastbone. She glances up. His face is full of cracked fury.

George chuckles. “Do it for me, will you?”

Aaron takes a deep breath. He puts a hand on Emily’s shoulder. “Sit.”

“Aaron,” she murmurs. “Don’t give him what he wants.”

“Sit down.”

Emily picks up her blanket off the floor. She wraps it around herself. She ducks her head and moves around Aaron, starting for the door. He grabs her by the arm.

“No.” She looks at his face. “No.”

Aaron’s hand tightens.

Emily lowers her voice. “Let go of me.”

“You know, I don’t think she likes that, Aaron.”

He glares at George. “Shut up.”

His eyebrows lift. “Are you gonna make me?”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

“Oh, you want to. I know you do. It’d be easy. Come over here, pinch my nose and cover up my mouth and watch me die. No great loss, right?” A corner of his mouth curls into a smile. “Just like putting down a mad dog. Right?”

“Aaron.” Emily speaks through clenched teeth. “Walk away. Now.”

“I don’t think so.” His voice is calm. “Not this time.”

“You…” Her voice drops into an intense whisper. “You don’t want to engage with him. You’ll lose.” She stares at him. “You don’t want to do this.”

Aaron looks at her and something comes loose in his face. It’s swept up by the hard currents of his rage. “Neither did you.”

Emily yanks her arm out of his hand and the blanket falls to the floor. She pushes past him, trips a little on the blanket, and storms out into the hallway. She reaches behind to hold her gown together. The two cops look surprised.

“You watch him,” she spits out, throat tight with tears. She points at the doorway. “You watch him because right now he’s dangerous.”

“O-Okay.”

They exchange glances.

“Yes ma’am.”

“I’m serious!”

The older of the two puts on a placating tone. “I know you are, ma’am.”

Emily stomps down the hall to the elevator, running through the closing doors. She leans against the wall and cries. The doors ding open and she stumbles back to her own room, wiping her face and hauling her clothes out of the cabinet. She starts to get dressed.