Jane shook her head. “What rules did you break?” she tried to spin the conversation back to their predicament. If she could work out what Hoyt was playing at, she could make some sort of plan.

“Hoyt.” She began, looking towards the door in case the surgeon returned. “He instructed me to come in here and slice your neck. I wasn’t to speak to you or tell you what was happening.”

Jane growled, low in her throat and it was Maura’s turn to smile. She loved the animalistic way Jane expressed herself. It was raw, primal and sent all sorts of signals to her body. She squirmed in her seat.

“He said there was a….”she paused, trying to remember the term “corpse button on your chair and if I tried to help you, he’d kill us both.”

“Wait, a what?” Jane asked. “Corpse… a dead man switch?”

“Yes. A dead man switch.” Maura made a mental note before continuing. “I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you. But I wanted to check your chair.”

It was all falling into place. Hoyt wouldn’t use a bomb; it was too messy, too instant for his tastes. He liked the watching people suffer before they died, a bomb would take away his Big O. Hoyt wanted to terrify her, make her think that he’d gotten Maura on his side, to see Jane’s reaction when her best friend came in to deliver the first cut.

“So why did you cut my hair?” Jane asked. It was the only part she couldn’t understand.

“Hoyt said he had a camera, he expected me to bring back blood on the tissue to prove I had done it, so I cut a small strand of your hair and put that in the tissue instead.” She grinned at Jane who returned her own smile.

“Don’t worry, it won’t show.”

Jane frowned. “If he has a camera in here, then why would he need evidence you’d cut me?”

“Oh. Well yes. That’s a good point.” Maura hung her head, feeling ashamed that her logical mind hadn’t made that connection.

“So there’s no bomb and no camera.” Jane concluded. “Do you have a pin or a clip or something like that?” she asked suddenly.