"Please tell me you were doing what I thought you were doing."

Gilliam turned the engine on and pulled the car away from the curb. His face was a mannequin mold, eyes gazing straight ahead, never once turning to look at the detective sitting beside him.

"What?"

"The shed." She took a deep breath and sighed. "You think she's hiding something, don't you?"

"I was pointing out things that I thought were weird—that's all," he said, shrugging, then leaning forward to peer through the windshield, making sure they were indeed going down the same road they came from.

Bishop was glaring at him. She had never seen him like this. She knew him for barely a day, but in the extensive number of hours she had already spent with him, she never saw him like this.

"Don't you think it's weird?" he asked. "How that one patch of grass is taller than the rest of the lawn?"

"Gilliam." She shook her head once and turned her attention back to the road. "We can't get a warrant based on some… weird patch of tall grass in the girl's back lawn. The court's not going to accept that."

"No." She watched with furrowed eyebrows as he took one hand off the wheel, shoved it into one of his pockets and fished something out—his cell phone—then turning it on with a single press of a button. "You can't."

She saw the corner of his lip twitching, and that knowing glint in his eye. She frowned. "And you can?" she asked.

He shrugged again, his left hand holding his hip as he brought his phone up to his ear. "I have connections."

"Oh, is that who you're calling right now?" She crossed her arms in front of her. "Some district attorney friend of yours who can get a warrant for some… hunch you're running off of? I swear to God, Gilliam, I am not going to lose my job for this."

"You won't," he reassured, and to her confusion, his tone of voice was light—genuine. "I promise. I'm the one making the call. I'm the one putting my job on the line here."

"And for what?" She told him to take a left, and without question, he wedged his phone between his cheek and his shoulder as he used both hands to turn the wheel. "Look, I get it. This case is important to you, as much as it is important to me. We both want to get it done as quick and efficient as we can. But what you did back there—what you're doing now—is getting ridiculous, don't you think?"

Driving down a straight road, Gilliam shot her a brief glance. "Abigail Bishop."

"I told you not to call me that."

He ignored her. "Look at me in the eye and tell me you don't think that Sullivan girl is suspicious."

She couldn't do that—not technically. The best she could manage was turning her head at an angle so her gaze could meet his for two seconds before he had to turn his attention back to the road. "I do," she said. "We still can't clear her background, and she doesn't want to talk about it, either—not willingly, at least." Maybe not within the confines of her own home, Bishop thought. Interrogation 101. "We still haven't cleared her alibi yet. We didn't even get to ask her about what happened when her boss confronted her the other day."

"No, we didn't," he agreed.

"There's something off about her." She took a deep breath and leaned back against the leather seat, before gesturing him to take a right in the upcoming intersection. "I can't tell what it is. But there's something she isn't telling us."

"And that's why we're bringing her in for questioning," he stated, then paused when he finally—finally—felt her glare piercing through his skull, and turned briefly to meet her eyes. "We are bringing her in, aren't we? You just said so yourself—you think something's up with her. You think she hasn't told us everything about her involvement in the case."

"I said she was hiding something," she reiterated. "I didn't say she was still involved in this case somehow."

"But we are getting a search warrant for that house."

"No." She pointed to his phone when she heard noise and static-masked rustling coming from its direction. "You're getting the search warrant for that house."

Once again, she caught the rare sighting of the corner of his lip twitching, as he once again offered her a knowing glance. "Touché, Fräulein Detective," then he started talking into his phone.

She tuned out of his conversation with whatever contact he had, from whom he was asking for help now, instead gazing out the window while still somewhat paying attention to the road, to make sure the pair didn't get lost on their way back to the neighborhood of the crime scene. Gilliam might have not realized it himself—not yet,at least, despite his hand on the wheel still driving them in the direction she pointed towards, but she knew he would at least appreciate taking a look at the scene of the crime, assuming he had not done so the day prior.

It also gave them something to kill the time with—Bishop was constantly checking her phone every five minutes or so, in case she received a text or an email from the forensics lab, or maybe even one from Jane, in case the good doctor found something else worthy of note from the bodies.

The families. Two unassuming, ordinary suburban families who died just two nights ago.

Detectives weren't supposed to think too much about the victims—who they were, what they were like before the crime, beyond the scope of the case. But Abigail herself wasn't too different from her father; he would come home from work exhausted, drained, evident even in his young daughter's innocent eyes. He would still greet her with open arms as she ran into them, but she could almost always tell whenever something at work took a hit on him—mentally, emotionally, such and such.

Her mother expressed doubts when Abigail first told her she was joining the police force. She would be lying if she said she didn't have doubts of her own. Handling crimes—even the petty ones—meeting people from all sorts of backgrounds, with all sorts of complicated pasts, and now dealing with murder—it wasn't just anybody's cup of tea.

Bishop sank in her seat as she pondered this over. It was difficult to not let things like this get the better of her. But if someone were to ask her where else she would rather be, all she could think about was in bed, at home, trying to sleep. Except that she knew she still couldn't sleep—wouldn't. Not with all this in her head.

She turned her head to Gilliam when she heard him bidding his acquaintance goodbye and hung up the phone. He stashed it back in his pocket, briefly glancing at her in acknowledgement of her distant glare, then sighed.

"It's being processed as we speak," he said.

She lifted her eyebrows. "The search warrant?"

He glanced over to her side for a second before turning back to the road. "Did you want me to get the arrest warrant as well?"

"As many favors you have that your so-called 'friends' owe you—" She pointed him to take a right at the incoming intersection. "—I don't think that's even possible."

"I was joking, detective."

"Yeah, well." Can't really tell when you do, but there's a lot of things about you I still have yet to figure out. "You seemed like you were going to anyways, even without my consent."

He did as she told him to, as the car made a semi-harsh turn down a familiar street. "The FBI technically doesn't need the local police's consent."

"Under certain circumstances, perhaps. This is still my case."

"A collaborative effort, detective."

She folded her arms in front of her. "Which means that I still have a say in what you choose to do, as long as it pertains to this case." She watched in amusement as his expression started to fall halfway through her sentence. "Correct?"

"Where are you taking us, detective?"

She resisted rolling her eyes, instead turning her head back to the road. "The scene of the crime," she said. "I thought you would appreciate a little look-see before we proceed—and, you know, while we're waiting for the warrant and all. You haven't checked it out, have you?"

"No." He sounded surprised. "I would, in fact, appreciate that very much."

"See?" She leaned back against her seat, mentally preparing herself for the exposure that was to come. At least now, having seen the scene a first time, she knew what to expect—and, with the case still open, she hoped to God that all she was expecting was indeed all they would be getting once they got there. "I can play nice."

Both houses were left untouched since Bishop was last there—as untouched as it could be, aside from the lack of bodies and any other samples of evidence still being processed at the forensics laboratory.

The pair of investigators entered the Smiths' former place of residence with great caution. It was the first crime scene she herself checked out, and, in her opinion, the less gruesome one—a taste of what was waiting for the FBI agent in the Walkers' household. It didn't mean the house was any less disturbing, however, even with the bodies removed; there were still large areas of dried blood where the bodies were discovered, enough to indicate that something gruesome had occurred in this building not too long ago.

"This was where we found Jordan Smith," she said as she held the teenager's bedroom door open a little further, then pointing to the massive bloodstain on the bedsheets. Beside her, Gilliam peeked in, eyebrows knitting as soon as his eyes fell on it.

"The kid?"

"Yeah. Sixteen, only child, goes to the local high school just up the road—the one we passed by earlier." Would his friends miss him? Have they even heard the news yet, though? What did he aspire to be growing up? Or was he one of those kids who just wanted to get out of his parent's house the first chance he got? "Grandparents from both sides have passed away. No other known relatives."

She watched him with a hawk's eye when he carefully stepped past her and into the room, approaching the bed. His gaze followed another stain trail—that of the mysterious unknown black drops Jane had pointed out the first time—as it led to the wooden floor, suspiciously stopping right after it moved past the bedside drawer, where a yellow evidence marker was placed right by its foot.

"Still nothing from Forensics yet?" Gilliam asked, and Bishop shook her head. "Huh. That's strange."

Bishop frowned. "What is?"

Gilliam crouched down, pointing to where the trail stopped. "The sizes of the droplets are all about the same, all along the trail, with very slight variation."

She blinked. "Do you have, like, microscopic eyes or something?"

"No." His voice strained as he stood up. "But I've been at this line of work long enough to tell the difference."

She tried to ignore the alternate implication of his words. "Any significance to that, though?"

"Not yet," he admitted with a sigh, but his eyes were still staring at the trail. "Other than the fact that it's almost deliberately done."

"The black stains?"

Gilliam nodded. "Think of it like a bleeding, open wound—the blood trails would grow smaller and thinner the further the distance, right?" He turned his attention back to her. "The trail would be messy—all over the place. Other than the distance between each droplet, it seems as though whoever left this trail—presumably our killer—did this quite deliberately."

Bishop made a point to show clear hesitation before she could cut through the police seal that would forbid most people from entering the Walkers' residence. It wasn't to be tampered with in general, but considering the co-lead investigator had yet to take a look at the scene of the crime, it was necessary harm, to say the most.

And when Gilliam noticed her hesitation, she gave him a pointed look and a sigh.

"I've been to a number of Woods' crime scenes," Gilliam said, in a rather calm voice, though she wasn't sure if the tone was directed at her specifically or otherwise. "If this is his doing, then I am more than prepared to see whatever lies in store for us here."

"Good to know," she grumbled, mostly to herself, before she broke the seal with her pocket knife and opened the door.

The message was still there, displayed across the wall of the master bedroom like the graffiti at the back of city hall. Someone might see it as beautiful—there were still nothing but spiders crawling up Bishop's spine the second she laid her eyes on them this afternoon.

Gilliam stopped in the middle of the room and stared at the bloody letters painted on the wall. "So, that's the thing you were talking about."

Bishop moved to stand beside him, arms folded in front of her. "Yeah."

"This—" He raised his hand halfway, index finger gesturing towards the message. "This is new, though. I've never seen this before."

"You said the whole 'go to sleep' thing was part of his M.O."

"But he never wrote it out like this," he said, waving his hand at the three words. "He says it to his victims before he attacks them. He doesn't write it out for them after killing them."

"Maybe it's directed at us?" She tried to look toward him for confirmation. "This is a taunt, if I've ever seen one."

"Maybe." Gilliam's voice was distant, however. "Woods is most certainly a thrill-seeker—he enjoys the act of killing itself. He knows we haven't caught him yet because we can't."

"Why can't you?"

The question came out on a whim. The bluntness of her voice pulled the agent's attention towards the detective, eyebrows relaxing and raising in genuine surprise. "What?"

"Why haven't you caught him yet?" she asked with specific wording, leading him to frown.

"I've told you this before, detective." He shook his head, suppressing a scoff under his breath. "Every time we get close to catching him, he just disappears. We pin-point his location, we give chase, and he's not there. It's like this kid is two—three steps ahead of us at all times."

"You're the FBI." She shrugged. "How can the FBI not catch some twenty-something-year-old kid running around the streets all by himself?"

"I don't know." Words she never thought the apparent know-it-all would say. "The bastard's a smart one—a tricky one. Slips right through our fingers every single damn time. I was hoping this will be the one time we finally catch him."

"If this is him," she reminded with a stern voice. "The evidence we have so far isn't quite matching up, you know." Watching the lack of change in his expression, she knitted her eyebrows at him. "You are aware of this, right? The puzzle pieces aren't fitting together."

He turned to her, eyes blinking blankly. "Is that so?"

She sighed. "Well, I mean—from what you've told me about them, anyway. If they really are literally professional serial killers, then some of these things aren't quite adding up—"

She was given no more room to further her argument—a sharp, unfamiliar series of beeps echoed throughout the lifeless bedroom, drawing both hers and Gilliam's attention to it, and the apparent source location of the sounds—Gilliam's trousers.

Without tearing his gaze from Bishop's, he fished out his cellphone, tapped on his screen and brought it over to his ear.

"Special Agent Gilliam." His forehead furrowed when a muffled voice emanated from the phone's speaker, and Bishop looked on with curiosity. "Oh. Right. I understand. Much appreciated, Barton. Thank you."

He hung up the phone and stashed it back in his pocket.

"The warrant's ready," he said.

Bishop took a deep breath and nodded. "Let's go, then."

"Why am I here?"

Bishop's eyes stared at the young woman sitting behind the table, facing straight at the two investigators entering the interrogation room. Gilliam had stridden inside ahead of the detective bearing a case file in his hands, reading it as he walked down the hallway—it was most certainly not the file for the current case they were investigating, as that was in Bishop's hands—for what reason, even Bishop didn't know. But he was almost paying absolutely no attention to Skye Sullivan, who, having realized Gilliam was a dead end, now looked to the detective for an answer to her demand.

Bishop closed the door behind her, fully entrapping the three of them within the cold, grey room.

"I'm telling you guys," the younger woman added, her voice stern as it was when they left the Sullivan household, but not loud, "I have nothing to do with those murders. I didn't even know they happened until you told me about them this morning."

Bishop took a deep breath as she tried to offer the younger woman a sympathetic look. "And we believe you—"

"No—" Gilliam interrupted, having moved to the other corner of the room, briefly looking up from the case file in his hands to look at Skye, but pointing towards Bishop, "—She believes you. I don't."

The detective sighed, choosing not to correct her partner. "—But there's something else that we need to talk about."

Unsurprisingly, Skye scoffed—it was quickly cut off, however, when she lurched forward and started coughing, prompting her to bring a hand up to cover her mouth—before folding her arms in front of her and leaning back against her metal chair. "About what? The fact that I'm not being upfront about where I came from? My lawn maintenance that you kept on grilling me about?"

Now, Gilliam fully turned his head up from the folder in his hold, but continued holding it between his fingers as he stared at her with mock curiosity. "That's actually precisely what we're here to talk about—" He straightened his posture. "—Miss Sullivan."

Bishop took the opportunity to quickly take a seat on one of the chairs across from Skye. Once settled, she looked up to face the younger woman, placing her arms flat on the cold surface of the metal table. "We conducted a thorough search of your house, Skye."

"Yeah, I know," she near-scowled, bringing her hand up again to swipe her sleeve against her sniffling nose. "Your co-workers quite literally dragged both me and my brother out of the house when you did. I mean—" She scoffed feebly, almost laughing even. "Do you guys even have a warrant?"

"Yes, we do." Bishop took out the search warrant from the case file in her hands and placed it flat on the table. She wished she didn't have to do this—she really did. "We conducted a thorough search, including your backyard." At the mention of the backyard, Skye's eyes fell towards the printed document laid out in front of her. "We found something quite interesting there, Skye."

In the uneven patch of grass. Gilliam, that sonofabitch.

"Yeah?" Her tone of voice was an empty threat. An echo. She turned her head away to cough into her elbow.

"Yes." The detective swallowed hard, looking straight into the brunette's eyes. They seemed to have taken on a slightly darker tint, looking almost more tired now than they were when they met her before—and it had only been a few hours since their visit. "We brought in the search dogs—took them through the entire property. They started barking as soon as we got to the backyard." She opened the case file again and took out one of the photographs taken during the search of the house, laying it out for all three of them to see. "And, after some careful digging done on the efforts of my fellow officers, we found a dead body—buried right there, in your backyard."

Skye averted her eyes away as soon as the photograph was on the table. It was of said dead body, half-decomposed, still with chunks of rotting flesh and bits of clothing attached to the skeleton, freshly dug out by the search team just a couple of hours prior. It was, once again, an image Bishop wouldn't be able to get rid of from her mind in the days to come.

She took another deep breath before continuing, the detective's voice almost straining the entire time. "We have positively identified that the body that we found in your backyard—" She took out another picture—a profile image of a man bearing short brown hair, "—is your brother, Timothy Sullivan."

They didn't—hadn't, not yet. The decomposing corpse wasn't even on its way to Jane's office in the city yet. It was a very early presumptive identification, based solely on strands of brown hair that matched the picture she just pulled out—just printed out minutes ago while pulling together the case file for the interrogation—as well as a very rough estimate time of death based on stage of decomposition, which itself was a fair consensus based on Bishop and Gilliam's collective knowledge pool.

But they had to say something to make the girl speak, even if it meant near-baseless theories that should be proven true, or otherwise, in a matter of a couple of hours or so.

Fortunately for them, it paid off—Skye didn't seem the slightest bit surprised at the photograph of the freshly-dug-out corpse, or the mention of her brother's name. Instead, her right hand went up to her lips, and she began to chew on the corner of her nail as her eyes stared intently at the photograph of her brother. A second afterwards, she tried to suppress another cough in the back of her hand.

Gilliam approached the table, snapping his folder shut and placing it down on the surface, pinned beneath his hand. "So, you do know about the body," he stated matter-of-factly, eyes drilling into the young woman's scalp. "Were you the one who killed him?"

The girl's head immediately snapped up, eyebrows knitted together, dark eyes glaring at him. "What? No! No, of course not."

"But you do know he's dead."

"I—" She froze for several seconds, then blew air harshly through her nose. She tore her eyes away from the agent and at an empty spot on the table. "I don't want to talk about it."

"You said he left the house a few months ago," Bishop said in a much softer tone—at least, relative to Gilliam's. Good cop, bad cop. She looked toward the girl with worry. "You lied to us, Skye. Why?"

"Because—" She took a deep breath. "I know what it's gonna look like when you do find his body, especially with you guys accusing me of murder the second you came to our house." She turned her glare to Bishop, then back towards Gilliam. "But I'm telling you now, I didn't kill him."

"Then did Tobias kill him?"

Bishop couldn't stop Gilliam from pressing further—as soon as he spoke those words, Skye redirected her fierce glare at the federal agent, fury written all over her face. "No," she snapped harshly, despite the small volume of her voice, but her body was leaning forward, like a threatened animal in a cage. "No. Toby wouldn't hurt a fly."

"That scar across his cheek indicated otherwise."

"That's not—" She paused to take a deep breath, turned her face into her elbow again, before continuing. "That's his sickness, all right? His disorder—he can't feel pain. Literally can't feel any pain whatsoever. He doesn't know when he's hurting himself more than half the time." She shrunk back slightly. "He had this… this habit that he got when he was a kid—he would chew the inside of his cheek, and because he couldn't feel how painful it was, he did it often enough and bad enough that he…"

She trailed off, and Bishop, realizing what the younger woman was implying, spoke nothing of it. She thanked the Heavens that Gilliam, too, didn't press on that matter any further.

"That still doesn't mean he couldn't have killed your older brother," the agent said instead, his voice oddly neutral.

"And I'm telling you, he didn't." Skye leaned back against her seat, once again folding her arms in front of her. "Toby looked up to Tim—he practically adored him. He wouldn't dare hurt him—neither of us would."

"Then, who did, Skye?" Bishop tried again, pulling the girl's attention back to her.

Skye scoffed. "What makes you think he was even murdered?"

There was a brief pause—Bishop thought Gilliam would explain it for her, but oddly enough, he had pulled away from the table, swiping the file beneath his hand along with him, almost shrinking back into the shadows filling the sides and corners of the room.

Bishop sighed and turned towards the photograph of the body recovered from the backyard. "Preliminary observation indicates Mr. Sullivan sustained severe wounds prior to his death." Her voice was almost too monotonous. It made even Bishop herself uncomfortable at how dreadful she sounded. "Despite the decomposition on the body, we were able to identify several large wounds around his chest area—enough to have killed him, if done antemortem." She then looked up at Skye, whose hostility front was slowly breaking down before her eyes. "He was stabbed to death—wasn't he?"

"I don't—"

"If Toby didn't do it, who did?" Gilliam spoke up. The roles they were apparently taking, without Bishop's prior acknowledgement, were still well in place. "You know who killed your brother, don't you?"

Deafening silence. The interrogation room was built for this—the enclosed space, the lack of sounds or noises coming from anywhere else except perhaps the barely-noticeable humming of the air conditioner in the room. There was no other furniture aside from the table, one chair on the side of the person being interrogated and two on the side of the interrogators. In the far-left wall was the one-way mirror—it showed nothing more than a completely perfect inverted image of the exact same grey room the three of them were in, including reflections of themselves, at least from this side of the mirror. It was always curious to see how witnesses and suspects interacted with the mirror—even when most people knew of its one-way property, Bishop could argue the feeling of being watched from the other side of the mirror had its own effect on the interrogation.

There was no one on the other side now, however—there was rarely anyone on the other side of this one, in fact, but even placebos can work wonders.

Eventually, Skye heaved out a strained sigh, clearing her throat before speaking. "It was… some burglar," she choked out, eyes glaring away from both Bishop and Gilliam. "I was, uh—I was still working at the clinic. Toby was fast asleep. Someone tried to break in, and Tim was there, and he…" She trailed off again—very understandably, in Bishop's eyes.

"Wouldn't Toby have woken up at some point?" Gilliam asked.

"He takes sleeping pills—some of the stuff that I took from the clinic sometimes." The answer came out smoothly this time around, with very little thought behind it. It was almost her recurring theft of the clinic was a feeble matter now—something trivial compared to everything else at hand. In all Bishop's honesty, it might as well be. "He can't get a wink of sleep without them. Whatever happened in the living room that day—he didn't hear a single damn thing. And, he, uh—" She paused, swallowing hard. "He still blames himself for Tim's death. Says things like, what if he had woken up the second anything happened—that sort of thing."

Bishop sighed, leaning just slightly back against her chair as she studied Skye's expressions. "Why didn't you just tell this to us sooner? Why did you lie?"

"Because—" She paused, breath caught stuck in her throat as she offered the detective a helpless shrug. "I didn't know what to do, okay? You were coming in and accusing me of murder. Imagine how bad it'll seem when you find out we had to bury our own brother's dead body in our backyard."

"Why did you bury him in the backyard?"

Skye turned to Gilliam. "What?"

"Why not bury him at the cemetery?" the agent added nonchalantly. "There's one about three blocks from where you live."

Bishop nodded, confirming his statement, but soon deflated her shoulders when the realization came upon her. How does he know there's a cemetery in the area?

Skye glared at him, livid. "We barely have a roof over our heads and food in our bellies. You think we can afford a burial?" Then, she leaned back, blowing air harshly through her nose as her hand went up almost automatically at this point, waiting for her throat to choke out another cough sooner or later.

She didn't appear to be sick when they visited her this morning, though Bishop did notice she was coughing more than the typical person would—it was a dry cough, like a smoker's cough, but she didn't recall smelling any cigarettes when they were at the Sullivan residence earlier.

"Are you okay, Skye?" the detective found herself asking, and Skye's eyes briefly shot over to Bishop.

"Yeah." Her voice was faint again. "Yeah, I'm fine. Why? What's wrong?"

Bishop shot a brief glance at Gilliam. No comments. "Did, uh—was Tim a smoker, Skye?" A long shot, she thought, but she should at least ask.

The brunette blinked. "He was, yeah—he tried to quit a little while back, though. Before he, um…" She looked away, clearing her throat while a single finger scratched the back of her scalp. "Why? What's wrong?"

It's been half a year since he died, though, Bishop thought to herself, frowning. Maybe she's still a passive smoker, but should it be this bad?

At best, she decided, it was the reason for her constant coughing. At the very least, it was something worth mentioning to Jane concerning the late man's autopsy.

"Nothing," Bishop said instead, once again offering a brief glance to every single person in the room with her. "It's just—you have quite the bad cough there."

"Hmm? Oh—yeah." Again, Skye cleared her throat, though it sounded much harsher this time. "I, uh, must've caught the flu or something. I'm sure it's fine."

The detective, however, didn't miss how the brunette's dark eyes briefly went over to the door behind the former—how she started chewing on the corner of her lip as her gaze lingered there for quite some time.

Beside her, however, Gilliam cleared his own throat, but under an entirely different context than the young woman sitting across from them. "Detective," he said lowly. "The shed."

"Hmm—oh, that's right." The shed. Bishop took another deep breath before reaching back into the folder to pull out several more photographs—the ones taken of the shed that Gilliam also questioned about during their visit that morning. Goddamn bastard. "Until we've received full autopsy results on Timothy Sullivan, we also wanted to ask you a few questions about your shed."

Whatever Skye was pondering about, the mention of the shed brought her focus back to the concurrent interrogation, dark eyes growing wide as they glared back at the detective, then the agent. "My fucking shed?"

"Yes," Gilliam retorted almost harshly. "The fucking shed."

"We found a mattress—" Bishop pointed to one of the photographs taken of the shed's interior, "—a mini-fridge—which has been emptied out—a desk, a toolbox, among several other items on the metal shelving unit inside that shed. Oh—and, of course, the lawnmower, too." The detective looked back up at the brunette, whose face turned a shade paler at everything the former just listed out. "Someone's been living back there, isn't that right, Skye?"

"Wh—" The brunette scoffed, eyes still staring intently at the photograph. The back of her hand, once again, shot up to her mouth to cover the unruly noise that escaped her throat soon afterward.

Gilliam approached the table, hands buried inside his pockets as he stared at the silent girl. "Not to mention the traces of blood found all over the shed—on the floor, on the mattress, around the desk—everywhere."

Bishop matched Gilliam's gaze, forehead furrowing with concern. "Who was living back there, Skye?"

"I don't—" She took a deep, labored intake of breath, shaking her head. "I don't know, okay?"

"Bullshit." Gilliam scoffed, walking a few paces away from the table. "You're lying. You know that shed's there—you know what was in it, and you know what you were saying when you told us about it."

"I—I don't know, okay?" She was breathing hard now, eyes wide open, dark pupils contracting as they glared at the agent, then at Bishop. "I don't fucking know!"

"Skye." The tension in the room made it difficult for Bishop to stay calm, but someone had to. "Whoever you were housing in that shed—he or she is very likely a dangerous person, with all the blood we found inside. You can't have housed someone in that shed without knowing who they are."

The brunette turned her gaze to the detective in desperation. "Detective, I don't—"

"Skye." She made her voice stern, but calm—as calm as she could remain to be, at least. "Skye. You need to start telling us the truth."

"I am!"

"No." There was no more sympathy in Gilliam's voice, if there ever was any—just hostility now. "No. You know who lives there—who was living there, don't you? And you're lying to us right at our faces."

"I'm not lying—"

"Skyler—"

A series of sharp knocks cut through the thick tension in the air like hot knife through butter—loud enough that it cut Bishop off from what she was about to say, and immediately yanking everybody's attention towards the door. Stunned, the detective finally snapped out of her stupor to exchange a frown and questioning glance with her partner, who seemed just about as confused as she was, before taking the liberty of being the first to stand up and move.

From the corner of her eye, Skye was struggling to breath, chest heaving, eyes wide like a deer in headlights.

The detective marched across the room, took hold of and twisted the knob, before pulling the door open just the slightest crack.

Her frown deepened when she saw a junior officer standing right in front of the door, his hand still raised where he had knocked, eyes quickly trailing up to Bishop's the second he noticed the door was open.

"What is it, Parsons?" she questioned rather hastily. He should know better than to interrupt an ongoing interrogation, she thought.

And he must've, because the wide-eyed worry lines all over the younger man's pale face indicated something was wrong—enough so that he risked disturbing the interrogation just as they were getting somewhere.

"We've, uh—" A bead of sweat trickled down the side of his face as he swallowed hard. His voice, already naturally meek compared to his co-workers, sounded like a terrified child in that exact moment. "Sorry to interrupt you, ma'am, but we've got a situation. There's something going on outside—something real bad."

She knitted her eyebrows together. "What? What do you mean? What's going on?"

"Uh, I—I think you should go see for yourself, ma'am." The poor man was stuttering uncontrollably. Behind her, she heard Gilliam's chair scraping against the ground, and Parsons' gaze went past Bishop's shoulder. "And, uh, you, too, sir. I—I think he's asking for those two people you just brought in earlier."

Two people? Skye and Toby, she quickly thought, in a late realization.

"Who is?" Gilliam's voice inquired from behind her.

"I—I don't know, sir!" Parsons managed to stutter out in panic, but the second he did, Bishop almost reeled back in surprise when another officer came up behind Parsons and rushed past them, down the hallway and towards the front desk, yelling something she didn't manage to catch.

Parsons himself immediately pulled back away from the door and, despite some hesitation, immediately went after where the other officer had gone. Seconds later, she heard people yelling from that same direction, demanding for more backup to head towards the building's main entrance and exit.

With wide eyes, Bishop snapped her head around towards Gilliam, hoping for an explanation, but he, too, had the same look of confusion overtaking him.

Behind them both, Skye looked uneasy. "Wh—What's going on?"

"Well." Bishop looked toward Gilliam again, who gave her a brief nod as he stood up and started heading towards the door as she threw it wide open. "We better find out."