So, it was over between them, whatever "it" had been. He didn't call. She didn't know why she thought he might.

It was harder as days went by to force a smile and a witty one-liner. She still slept with the lights burning all hours. It helped to be out of her apartment, in bright, public places.

She worked as much as she could and was eager to come in when Bug called her on her day off. There had been a pile-up on I-95 with multiple fatalities, and they needed someone to pick up the slack and cover other autopsies.

"You have something for me?" she said as she entered the autopsy room. Bug and Nigel worked on the other side of the room.

"Yeah, thanks, Jordan. She's right there next to you," Bug said without looking up from his work. "Det. Carver put a rush order on that one."

There was a woman on an autopsy table right inside the door. Jordan picked up the file and scanned the first page. "Kathy Gerrity. Age 32. What have we got?"

"Give you one guess what killed her," Nigel said grimly.

Jordan glanced down at the body. There was a long slash running across her throat. "Yow. That's a nasty piece of business."

"Yeah. Looks like the Charlestown Rapist is no longer the Charlestown Rapist."

Jordan's head snapped up. "What was that?"

"Didn't you hear?" Bug continued. "He's stepped up his sick little game. He killed someone this time."

Her eyes fell back down onto the lifeless form on the table. She was dead. She had not been lucky. Could Jordan have saved her somehow?

Jordan's chest was tightening. Sweat beads immediately popped onto her forehead, forming a stinging pool in her eyes. "I can't...breathe..." she huffed helplessly.

"What's that, luv?"

"I can't...breathe...I...can't..."

She was aware that Nigel and Bug were now staring at her curiously from across the room.

"Are you okay, Jordan?"

"I can't. I can't." She staggered backwards, her arms flailing wildly for balance. The instrument tray fell with a crash to the floor. "I can't."

She turned and stumbled into the hallway.

It was Lily who later found in her in the locker room. Jordan had turned the shower on, but had not quite made it in. She was on the floor by the sinks curled into a ball with her knees pulled tightly to her chest.

XXXXX

Forty-five minutes later, after she had showered and changed into a fresh pair of scrubs, she found herself summoned to the conference room.

"You wanted to see me?" she asked casually as she stuck her head in the door.

"Ah, Jordan." Dr. Stiles was sitting at the conference room table and motioned to the seat across from him. "Yes. Please have a seat. Any idea why I wanted to see you?"

"You know me. Always getting called to the principal's office."

"Care to hazard a guess on what you did to earn this particular detention?"

"Well, there was that little incident where I almost disemboweled a colleague with my letter opener. I guess that kind of thing is sort of frowned on in the workplace." She smirked.

"There's that..."

He left a silence and leaned back in his chair. She squirmed in her seat, cleared her throat and rapped her fingers against the table.

"Hey, it was an accident," she reassured him.

"Freud would have said there are no accidents."

"He also said sometimes a cigar is just a cigar."

Stiles narrowed his eyes and nodded thoughtfully. "Anything else in recent memory?"

She shrugged and laughed. "Ya got me, doc."

He leaned forward and folded his hands on the table. "As much as I enjoy these verbal sallies, Jordan, I think our time together would be better served by cutting to the proverbial chase. You walked out of an autopsy this morning."

She sighed and rolled her eyes. "Hey, I don't know. I just froze. It happens to everybody. No biggie."

"I'm willing to bet that's true. It probably does happen to everyone in your line of work at one time or another in the span of a career. But I'm also willing to bet it doesn't happen without reason."

"So?"

"So...when it happens, it suggests that there's something very personal about the autopsy that makes it impossible to perform. Perhaps it's the death of a child. Perhaps it is an old man that reminds someone of a beloved grandfather." He paused. " What was it for you, Jordan?"

"Nothing! It was just a homicide! I've done hundreds of homicides since my mother was killed."

"This isn't about your mother for once. What was it about Kathy Gerrity?"

Her face fell, and she looked away. Stiles went on, slowly.

"Have you handled a murder-rape since your apartment was broken into, Jordan?"

"No."

"Something tells me that when we spoke of this before, you weren't lying. But you weren't telling me the whole truth, either. Were you?"

She looked down at the table top. "No. No, I wasn't."

XXXXXXX

Later, after she finally returned to her apartment, exhausted, she picked up the phone and dialed.

"Det. Carver."

"Lois, it's me. Jordan."

"Jah-dan! What can I do for you?"

Jah-dan. She always felt comfortable talking to Lois Carver. Perhaps it was because her thick accent always reminded Jordan of Max. It had been so long since she talked to him, she had almost forgotten what he sounded like, but Jordan could hear echoes of him in the detective's speech.

"I hear you're handling the Charlestown Murder-Rape."

"Yeah..."

"I have some information for you." The words were difficult. "We need to talk."