Rey went back out into the lobby which was dark and glowing only with the SOLO TECH sign. She expected the lights to turn on as she moved into the area, but they didn't, and she hurried behind the desk to grab her belongings. She started to hear a dinging noise, indicating a text message. At first, she thought it was her phone, but a quick check confirmed that it was not. With some horror, she realized it was Hilda's phone.

She thought it was likely that someone was looking for her, so she quickly stooped over the pull out drawer, despite her better instincts. She swiped the screen open and saw that there were three text messages. She opened the text messages and found an odd series of photos from strange angles. She kept thinking that she recognized the hallway, and it took her a few moments to realize that she did. It was the hallway that lead down to the public restrooms for the building. Rey had only used them once, on the day of her interview. There was an employee bathroom in the back that she used after she was hired, but she followed the dark hallway down to where she remembered the public bathroom being.

Someone had cleaned it for the night, and the lights were off. She pushed the swinging door in and at first was relieved to find that the bathroom was empty, or so she thought. She pressed the button that turned on the flickering halogen lights, causing her to squint before her eyes adjusted to the onslaught. She felt the need to leave, but something gave her pause and she began pushing the stall doors open. She came to the last one (there were about ten), and it was the larger stall meant to accommodate those with disability. She looked underneath, surprised to find a pair of feet there, slightly akimbo as if the person had fallen asleep on the toilet. And then, she saw the blood.

"Hello?" She asked, afraid of the sound of her own voice. She knocked on the stall, and with some regret, she found that it was open.

Her breath caught in her throat when she realized it was Hilda sprawled out atop the toilet. She blanched, turning white as a ghost before letting out a scream that could only be described as ear one was ever sure how they would react to a dead body, but she saw that Hilda's throat had been slashed and her eyes were open as if she'd been watching the entire time her life drained out of her body. From the look of the blood, it seemed it had been done there. How long had she been there? How come no one had noticed?

Rey turned around and vomited straight into the sink, unable to keep her dinner from coming back up and revisiting her. She retched, her vision blurry. She thought she might pass out. Ren had heard her scream, and he bust into the bathroom with all the tact of a raging bull. He found her bent over the sink, trying to keep herself from falling down onto the hard floor.

"Miss Beckett?" He questioned, before he realized what it was that had caused her such distress.

The rest of it was a blur. Ren was smart enough to take the phone away from her, perhaps realizing that it wasn't hers, perhaps thinking that if it was hers he should try to track down where the text messages came from. He grabbed her roughly, nearly lifting her up and carrying her out of the bathroom. She was most certainly in shock, and she felt cold and started to shiver all over. It was the same feeling one got when they hadn't been asleep for awhile and they started to get very cold, except for everything seemed to be moving in slow motion for Rey.

"Call the police," She kept saying, the sound of her own voice meek and mild.

Ren ignored her, for the moment, sliding out of his jacket. She watched the shift of his muscle beneath the white of his dress shirt as he revealed it. It must have been the shock, but she wondered what it might be like to run her hands along his shoulder blades. She shuddered again at the thought, wondering if she might vomit again. What was wrong with her? He slid the jacket around her shoulders. It had a faint, pleasant scent, but she couldn't place her finger on what it was. She had expected he might drown himself in cologne, but she had been wrong about that.

She also expected the jacket to be warm. It wasn't.

She tugged it around her shoulders. It dwarfed her and threatened to fall off, and she found it was helpful for her to generate her own heat. Ren seemed to know she was in shock, but he took in the whole scene with a sort of lazzez-faire that if she hadn't been so unaware, she might have thought odd.

"Call the police," She said again, shaking thoroughly in his jacket.

"Miss Beckett, please, shut up,"

At least he had said 'please'.

Finally, Ren called the police. He took his phone out and dialed the three little numbers, hitting the dial button and holding it up to his ear. He spoke in his dulcet tones, quiet and deep, and calmly reported that one of his employees had found a dead woman in the public restrooms. They asked him questions. Had he checked her pulse? Was she breathing? Was she conscious? Yes, no, no.

Rey couldn't remember what his answers were to those questions. Her teeth chattered and she wished she could make them stop. The noise felt incredibly loud in the silence of the building. Eventually the security guard had shown up. Ren started asking questions. How many times had the bathroom been cleaned in the last few days? Had it actually been completed? These were the types of things he was not expected to deal with, but he seemed to know these were questions he was going to be asked. The guard produced the log where the cleaning staff had been initialing to indicate that the bathroom had in fact been cleaned several times since Hilda had gone missing.

The police showed up one by one, and then the detectives, and then the people who processed the crime scene. There was an ambulance, and Rey was eventually taken out front to sit inside of it while they tried to get her to come out of shock. A blanket was placed around her shoulders over Ren's jacket. They gave her small cups of water frequently, which she sipped at. They kept checking her vitals to make sure it wasn't life threatening, but once it passed she found that exhaustion set in like a heavy bag of rocks.

It wasn't to be, as soon as she was feeling better and her blood pressure had returned to normal the detectives began asking her questions. How long had she been working there? How long had she known the deceased? How had she found the purse? How had she known where to go? Ren was also questioned, in much the same manner, over and over again until the cops seemed satisfied that they'd wrung as much information as they could out of both of them. She noticed that Ren's finely manicured fingers had blood on them, probably from when he'd tried to check her pulse. They took DNA samples from both of them, and Ren, to her surprise, consented.

They didn't seem to think he had killed her, but who really knew?

Finally, he was allowed to wash his hands. The cops told them that they had better let everyone go home after everyone who was there in the building had been questioned. They told them that they had better not come back the next day, either. The entire company was notified at some point, but by who or how Rey didn't know. When she was finally allowed to get out of the ambulance, she made her way over to her bike with a bit of wobble in her step. She felt like she needed a soda.

She realized she wouldn't be able to ride her bike home, so she decided to walk it, even though it was dark out and nothing good happened in this city after one am. She still had Ren's jacket over her shoulders, but she had lost track of him after awhile. It seemed like had had left, and was likely dealing with telling the entire company what had happened. He was probably doing some sort of damage control. The reporters were already starting to show up. Rey had missed the onslaught by just a split hair.

She walked home with her eyes ahead of her, but it was unclear if she was really seeing anything at all. Images of Hilda kept popping up in her brain, and she wished she could pluck it out of her skull and scrub it clean. She knew it didn't work that way. She didn't even realize the big black luxury sedan that had pulled up behind her, and was currently following her before the window rolled down and she heard her name being called.

"Miss Beckett," It was Ren. "Get in," He demanded. She got the feeling he was used to being obeyed.

"I'm fine," Even in her state, the memory of how much she despised him and how little she wanted to be indebted to him popped up.

"Don't be stupid, Miss Beckett," He warned, his voice dropping into a low purr.

"I'm nearly there, and my bike won't fit in your car,"

"Miss Beckett, I'm not in the habit of having to ask people twice," He said. "Please get in the car," Something in his tone gave her pause, and she stopped, the repetitive sound of her bike spokes pausing.

Was it concern?

Nope, couldn't have been.

"Fine," She said, rolling her bike to the back of the car. The driver popped the trunk and she found, to her surprise, that it fit just fine in the trunk.

Ren pushed the door open for her. It was as gentlemanly as she thought it was going to get with him. He scooted back into his seat and continued looking at his phone, a great black phone that she was sure he had ordered customized, just for him. She saw the matte lettering on the back of it: SOLO TECH. He was flicking through something, sending off messages with a quick tap or two before he set it aside and looked at her.

"Are you intending on keeping my jacket?"

She expelled a bit of unbelieving air from her lips before she shrugged out of it, handing it back over. He seemed outright disgruntled by the smell she'd left on it, and he held it out and set it across from him, presumably to be dry cleaned later. Rey felt like a pouting child, and crossed her arms over her middle. Surely she couldn't have smelled that bad? She took a shower and everything.

When he looked at her, she was sure she saw that strange little red pinprick in his eyes. She kept wondering if it was a trick of the light and the deep almost dark amber color of his eyes.

She realized too late that the driver had gone straight past her apartment.

"My apartment is back there," She said, pointing.

"I know," Ren said, blandly. Obviously he had no intention of telling the driver to turn around.

"Turn around, then," She said, her tones a bit panicked. Was he assistant napping her?

"No," He said in reply.

"But I live back there,"

He held up his hand, as if he would brook no more refusal. It was irritating, and she found an urge to reach out and push it back against his forehead and ask him why he was hitting himself.

"I want to go home, Mister Ren,"

"Please, just Ren," He replied. "And I'm not taking you home,"

"Why not Mister Ren?" She said, hoping just to irritate him.

"Because, I'm fearful that the person who killed Hilda was still in the building. If they knew her comings and goings, they surely know yours,"

"So you're kidnapping me because you're concerned about me?"

"I know you get unfathomable joy from being contrary just because you despise me," He said, looking at her, his expression dispassionate. "But I would rather not lose two receptionists in one night. One will be hard enough to explain to the police," He seemed displeased about having to get the cops involved.

"You didn't even care about her," Rey said, surprised.

"She was an employee, Miss Beckett, of course I cared about her. In the way that one cares about an employee,"

"So, this is how you care about an employee?"

"Not usually, no, but tonight is an exception,"

"You could have at least asked me,"

"You would have said no,"

He seemed to know more than what he was telling her. Rey considered opening the door and doing a barrel roll out of the car, but they were already on the bridge and the car was going too fast to even consider surviving it. She knew she was being ridiculous. The thought of spending the night in her bosses company made her skin crawl just a bit. She could have started screaming, and kicking, and trying to kill him, but she remembered that just hours ago she had accepted his offer for a job to be his personal assistant. She wondered if she would be working this closely with him.

"I'll bring you back in the morning," He said, and she realized he had been watching her pout out of the window. "It isn't as if I'm taking you hostage,"

It certainly felt like he was.

Rey became distracted from the strangeness of the situation once she saw where they were going. They were in the hills, where all of the big houses were. All of these people slept away the night, unaware of what was going on in the world...at least until morning came and they turned on the news. There were so many villas and small mansions that Rey found herself wondering what happened behind the doors.

She was surprised when they pulled up to an apartment building, not a mansion. She had expected Ren to live in some strange, dark house, but here was a modern apartment that stood stories high. Ren had been silent, working away on his phone while she stared out the window like a kid. The driver pulled up front, and Rey got a good look at him. He was bald, and he was wearing sunglasses. At night? Rey found that more unsettling than Ren himself. The man opened the door for them, and Ren walked into the building without waiting for her. She wondered if she should grab her bike, but the question was answered for her when the driver got back into the car and pulled away, presumably into the parking garage.

Rey ran to catch up with Ren, who was not waiting for her at all. The man at the desk said hello, and she barely made it in behind him into the empty, high tech elevator. She looked at the glowing buttons on the touch pad and watched Ren hit the very topmost. Of course. The elevator ride felt ages long, and she missed her bed, though she couldn't say she missed returning to an empty apartment she knew she was going to have to get out of soon. This was a diversion...and adventure. She could do her best to ignore who was at it's helm.

Ren looked at her, seeming to be wondering if she was going to press all of the buttons at once like a child would, but she didn't, just looked at him with an emotionless expression before he looked away.

When the elevator opened out on to the top floor, she realized he had the entire floor. It was so cliched she wondered if she should mention the movie 'Pretty Woman', but she realized that made her the hooker here. The place was decorated with stainless steel and cold colors, just like the office was. There were checkered pillows on a leather couch that wrapped around the whole room, and at it's center was a large mahogany coffee table that had been stained black. The room was lit with low hanging chandelier lights, which were on a remote. Ren picked it up and clicked them up a few, making the room a bit brighter.

There was a TV the size of a theater TV hung up against the wall and a fireplace that had a remote and was encased by glass heat resistant glass. The kitchen had one of those high tech fridges and freezers that was set back to make it look as if it was a wall, and after Ren took his shoes off, he made his way into the kitchen to retrieve her a bottle of water. He had to be putting a lot of trust in her to bring her here. She was immediately distracted by the large windows that looked over the entire city. Below there was a network of lights and neon, and it was so beautiful that it might make one forget the actual ugliness of the city. Ren stood beside her, offering her up the bottle of water. She took it, surprised that he would complete such a gesture.

"I have a guest room," He said, pointing. "It's through there. There are clean towels and fresh clothes, if you're inclined,"

She didn't respond, but her stomach did, offering up a faint growl to indicate that it was hungry.

"Ah," He said, digging his phone out of his pants and dialing a number. "I hope you like Chinese food,"

She guessed it was because it was likely the only thing open at this hour, so she merely nodded her head. She tried to hand him her debit card, and he looked at her as if she was trying to hand him a doggy bag full of doggy poo. She flushed, putting it away and moving to get a better look at his place. She was struck with the fact that there didn't seem to be much of him here. No family photos, no favored books, not even a shelf where he kept movies. He had art, but it all seemed chosen for the simple fact that it matched the room and not for any other reason. It was almost as if he was pretending to be living here.

When he had finished ordering the food, which she assumed he would be consuming with her, he came to find she had wandered off down the hallway. She found the study, full of books that looked untouched, and a desk that looked as if he barely ever sat at it. There was a Piano in an overhanging room that over looked the mountains, and a nook where one could sit and read. It was such a beautiful place, and it seemed as if no one was ever in it.

"Do you play?" She asked, as he came up behind her.

"Yes," He seemed irritated that she had gotten away from him. "Come this way, please," He turned her around and lead her away from his bedroom, back out into the living area.

He sat her down at the couch and sat a short distance away from her.

"I want to ask you about Hilda," He said, abruptly.

"Why? I hardly knew her,"

"Did she say anything to you that seemed off?"

"No," She said simply in reply. "Only that you liked to torture all of your receptionists and she would finish the stupid files that you gave me the night you caught me sleeping,"

Ben looked mildly irritated, like someone had spilled water on his pants, but he moved on from the statement.

"How did you find her phone?"

"The police already asked me this," She wrapped her arms across her chest in a defensive position.

"I want to hear it anyway," His voice took on that demanding edge, and through his teeth he said: "Please,"

"I noticed her purse in the drawer a night or so ago," She admitted. "It didn't dawn on me that it was anyone's until I realized Jo had taken hers home, so I pulled it out and had a look at it,"

"Why didn't you say anything?"

"Because I assumed, like everyone else, that she'd be coming back for it,"

"Miss Beckett," He said, obviously in disbelief. "You must have thought it was strange for someone to leave their phone,"

"I thought it was strange, but I didn't think it was strange enough to report,"

"She didn't give you any indication she was thinking about leaving?"

"No, not outwardly, but everyone at that company hates you," She said bluntly.

He took it apace, and she found herself disappointed that he didn't seem to care that no one liked him. He didn't even bother defending himself.

"What alerted you to the phone tonight?"

"I heard the text messages,"

"It wasn't dead?" He paused. "Strange,"

"The cops will find out, won't they? Where the texts came from?"

Ren nodded. He had been forced to hand it over once the police had shown up.

Rey had left out the bit where she'd taken the phone home and tried to call out to find Hilda. She had thought that it might cast undue suspicion on her, but she realized now that in omitting the information she might be in even more trouble. She hadn't killed Hilda, but she had lied. She took her bottom lip in her teeth and began chewing at it, an anxious habit. Ren watched her, the small pinprick of red light making itself apparent before he was distracted with someone downstairs requesting to be buzzed up.

Rey watched him return with a bag full of food. She began breaking it out, eating it directly from the containers with chopsticks she'd snapped apart. She paused with her mouth full of pork dumpling when she realized he wasn't eating.

"You're not going to eat?" She asked, swallowing back her mouth full of food.

"I'm not hungry," She thought she saw the beginnings of a smile on his lips, but as quickly as it was there it was gone.

He seemed to lose interest in her then. He got a call from someone and disappeared into the shadowy corridor of his apartment where he didn't want her going. She sat there, alone, in the over sized apartment and realized that she might have been in some dangerous stuff, now. Her coworker had been murdered at her place of employment. She was going to be kicked out of her apartment, shortly. She was spending the night at her boss' place, a man she neither liked nor trusted. She wondered, vaguely, if he had had something to do with Hilda. Surely he hadn't brought her here to repeat the same thing all over again?

When she finished eating, she looked at her phone and found it had died. She realized it was unlikely anyone would be looking for her anyway. Rose wasn't home. She moved into the guestroom, shutting the door behind her and locking it. She wondered if he had a key, but the futile gesture seemed to make her feel safer.

She saw the fresh towels. The bed was simple, dressed in gray bed sheets that had a lining of silvery material darted through them. She didn't bother undressing, though someone had lain out clothes for her to change into. She crawled into the bed and found herself crying, the tears streaking down her face silently. She didn't know what had brought it on, but once it had started it was difficult to stop it. She stained the bed clothes with her tears, and wiped at her nose, sniffling quietly in the dark.

Someone was dead. Someone she had seen just a few days ago. What had she gotten herself into, just for a bit of money?

She fell asleep still crying, unable to escape the inevitable exhaustion that came after having adrenaline flushed into your system.

When she fell asleep, she dreamed again that she was crawling through the hallway that was getting smaller, and smaller. This time she knew what she would find at the end, and Ren's voice egged her on: Miss Beckett, Miss Beckett, Miss Beckett.