"His name was Filip Brown," Andrea told me when she met me at the hospital, for the second time in just a few days. Filip. Everybody always called him Ron because he looked like the guy from Harry Potter and he always called me Mary. I thought it was funny that we both had nicknames for each other, and didn't really know each other's actual names. "He was twenty-six, never diagnosed with any mental illness, but after talking to his family briefly at the police station, he's always had a tendency to fixate and over the past couple of months, had started to completely cut them out."

"He always had friends over," I said. "They had no idea that any of this was going on?"

"We have the names of some of his friends and are tracking them down, but we haven't gotten to interview any of them yet," she answered me. "But I just got back from the apartment, and he had a lot of stuff locked up in the bedroom, so my guess is they weren't allowed in there and probably didn't suspect anything either."

"What was in his room?" I asked, despite the fact that I felt like I didn't really even want to know the answer. My body was still aching from getting slapped, punched, tossed to the ground a few times, and stabbed. Not to mention the mental image of seeing him fling his body over the edge of the building, effectively taking his own life right in front of me. I wasn't prepared, mentally or physically, for any sort of big news.

"A lot of surveillance gear, equipment to help him listen through the walls into your living room, and a lot of documentation about you," she informed me slowly, almost apprehensively, as if she knew that maybe I wouldn't want to know these answers either. "It'll all be cataloged as evidence, I'll let you take a look once we process it all, if you want."

"I thought I knew him," I told her, still in shock at this whole thing. The fact that I knew Mrs. Lamb would want to get to me after the fire and I still didn't think twice about leaving Sev to go into Ron's apartment made it clear how little I would have expected him to be Mrs. Lamb. "We've been neighbors for a couple of years, since I moved here, and we did favors for each other all the time. Looking back on it, all of his favors were to just push his agenda. He changed my locks so that he could have a key, took my trash out so he could get my things and learn more about me. But that's what all of our neighbors do for each other, we help each other out. I thought I knew him."

"Everybody in his life seemed to think the same thing. He was good at hiding who he really was, you shouldn't feel any sort of guilt for not figuring it out," Andrea told me.

"What about the blue truck?" I asked her curiously. "That's the only part that doesn't make sense to me, Ron didn't drive a truck and I never saw one parked at the building."

"There is a blue Chevy registered to his brother," she answered me. "We haven't interviewed him yet, but my guess is that he'd borrow that truck when he was trying to sneak around so that nobody would recognize his car."

That frustrated me even more than I already was at the police station, because I felt like if they would have investigated the people in my life even a little bit, that piece of information would have come up. When I first reported the situation, I gave her a list of people that I talked to on a somewhat frequent basis, and Ron was on that list.

"I'm really sorry we couldn't catch this guy sooner, Maren," Andrea said, as if she could read my mind. Or, more likely than that, she could see the frustration on my tired face.

I was upset that it felt like they could have put all of this together sooner, before anybody got hurt. But that wasn't Andrea's fault, it was the department and whoever allocated time for each case, which wasn't her job. So it didn't make sense to me to take that frustration out on her.

"It would have saved everybody a lot of time, and a lot of hurt," I finally said, trying my best not to sound frustrated. "What happens now?"

"A lot of paperwork on my end. For you, just try to get back to normal," she suggested with a sympathetic look on her face. "I'll give you some numbers of support groups and other programs that might be able to help."

"Thank you."

"We're going to leave a couple of police officers out here for you, the media might get a little crazy," she offered. "Anyway, that's really all I have for you right now. I'll let you know when we have more details, I just wanted to check in on you after the couple of days you've had. Hang in there."

Andrea's visit was short and sweet, but I appreciated it and it gave me just the slightest bit of insight into Mrs. Lamb/Ron/Filip.

I had only been at the hospital long enough to get treated for the deep stab on my leg and to have a brief call with my sister about what happened. I would have avoided telling my family that I almost died that day, but as I was leaving in the ambulance, I noticed news crews beginning to show up. Abigail had a Google alert for my name to read articles about my music that sometimes popped up and I knew it'd be better for them to find out directly from me rather than read a news article about it.

Understandably, she freaked out when I explained the situation to her and she assured me that she'd inform my parents and other siblings before deciding what to do. Although, I knew that once my parents found out, they'd immediately be on their way here. The silver lining was that it would take them at least an hour to get here, so I had some time to prepare.

As I was dialing Lina's number to fill her in as well, I heard a rushed out, "Thank god you're okay," from Sev as he entered the room and barreled toward me. As if he thought he'd never see me again, he wrapped my entire upper body in his strong arms, burrowing his face in the crook of my neck before quickly pulling away again and saying, "Shit, sorry, I didn't hurt you, did I?"

"No, I'm okay," I assured him. We didn't really get that much time at all to talk to each other on the roof because we were swiftly taken off of the building and placed in separate ambulance. Now, I could see some fresh stitches along his bicep where the bullet grazed his arm. "Hospitalized two times in less than a week. That's got to be some sort of record, right?"

"I was so freaked out, Maren," he told me, his dark eyes were wide and watery. "You were bleeding so much. And he had you for a long time, I should have known something was wrong earlier."

"Stop it," I told him quickly. "I'm going to be okay and you did as much as you could. My leg hurts, but it's just a cut. They're monitoring me for now to make sure it's clean, but I'll be out of here in a couple of hours."

"Am I acting like a baby?" he wondered with a short laugh before wiping one of his eyes with his rough palm. "He only had the gun pointed at me for a couple of seconds and my nerves have been shot ever since."

"And I thought you were supposed to be the big strong protector?" I teased him softly.

"Yeah, I guess I didn't do very much saving up there," he admitted with a light chuckle. "And I found out that when I'm in a life threatening situation, sarcasm is my last line of defense, which probably wasn't helpful either."

I thought back to when my hands were tied behind my back and Ron had started unzipping the front of the jacket until Sev's call interrupted him. Although it wasn't intentional, I was sure that Sev saved me from a lot more than what he realized. Just thinking about what could have happened made bile rise in my throat, so I didn't mention that part to Sev.

"After everything you've done for me already, I'm glad I got to do some saving of my own," I told him as I got my phone out to use the selfie camera to investigate how my face looked. The bandage I got the last time I was at the hospital, from hitting my head during the small explosion, was still taped to my temple but I also now had a black eye and a small cut on my chin. Not to mention the fact that I was covered in dirt from maneuvering between so many old, gross machines and being tossed around the concrete. "I look like crap."

"Yeah, a little," he agreed with an anxious laugh. "That's why I'm freaking out so bad, you really took a beating up there."

"It was a scary situation, you're allowed to take some time to freak out."

I waited for a few moments, just holding his hand and allowing him some time to breathe and just calm himself down some more. I understood how he felt, because I had the same feeling while I was on the roof and saw the gun pointed at me, but I felt a lot less of that adrenaline and panic once I was wedged between two metal contraptions and realized that I could take matters into my own hands. It didn't go perfectly smooth, but things worked out in the end and I'm at peace with it.

"How's your arm feeling?" I finally asked once it seemed like he was calming down more.

"Not great, but I'll be fine," he assured me, glancing over at the fresh stitches on his bicep. Wearing only his t-shirt now, the sleeve of the injured arm had to be rolled up while the other side was still down like normal.

"I'm kind of digging this look," I told him with a teasing laugh. "This half tank-half tee kind of thing you have going on, it's very handsome."

"I'm going to wear everything like this from now on, to show off the battle wounds I got from protecting my girl," he said jokingly, puffing out his chest and flexing his injured bicep. "Or, I guess it was more my girl protecting me, but same thing."

"Oh, so I'm your girl now?" I wondered with raised eyebrows, a smile starting to tug at my, thankfully uninjured, lips.

"Well, by the way you planted one on me the other day, I figured that's what you wanted too," he reminded me with a light laugh. It felt so good to be able to talk so openly about wanting to be with him, to tease and joke around without worrying about who could hear the conversation. It still felt wrong though, and I'd have to adjust to it, but it also felt really, really good.

"I thought maybe now that I'm not a damsel in distress and didn't need any more saving, you'd lose interest," I teased him.

"No, I did all the saving so that once the threat was gone, we could bang," he informed me sarcastically with a goofy little side grin on his thin lips.

"Ohh okay," I nodded in understanding, laughing along. "Even though I look like crap?"

I knew he was joking, but even just the joking mention of 'banging' made my knees go weak. Not only had it been a long time since I'd been with somebody else, it had also been a long time since I'd been with myself in that way too, once I realized Mrs. Lamb could see inside my apartment. I hadn't had any time to stress about my sexual frustration, but now that the whole ordeal was over, I could feel my body reminding me that there was quite some buildup there.

"Even at your crappiest, you're still the most beautiful person in existence," he assured me, his laugh and sarcasm gone as he gently ran his fingers through my dirty hair.

Gently, I scooted closer to the edge of the bed and patted the open spot beside me. "Come lay with me."

"Well, I didn't mean we have to do it right now," he continued to joke, but still climbed into the bed beside me, resting back so that I could rest my head on his uninjured arm.

"I'll try to keep my hands to myself," I assured him, and I was mostly joking, but Sev was really attractive and with how bad my dry spell had been, it actually was difficult not to just barricade us in this room and rip his clothes off. Now that I didn't have to answer to some mysterious puppeteer, I felt like I could do whatever I wanted again. And what I wanted to do right then, was Sev. But still, my leg wasn't very mobile and I doubted that the things I wanted to do with him were allowed in this sort of environment.

So I'd keep them all in mind, knowing that it was only a matter of getting released from the hospital, and then it was so on.