he asked.
“Alex got a call this morning from the morgue at West Side Hospital outside of New Orleans. They have a body that matches Anna’s description.”
Max’s heart sank.
He’d known there was a possibility that Anna had met with foul play, but he’d really been hoping for a happy ending for Anna and Colette.
Unfortunately, it seemed that the worst-case scenario was visiting the investigation before he really got started.
COLETTE WATCHED AS BRANDY stapled the printouts together. The girl was certainly attractive and apparently knew Max well enough to risk being fired for what she was doing, but Colette couldn’t help but think she was a little too young for him. She couldn’t be over twenty at the most.
Whatever the status of Max’s relationship with Brandy, it was none of her business, but that didn’t prevent her from wanting to know. “You’re not really supposed to give out that information, are you?” Colette asked, figuring she couldn’t be faulted for the mostly innocent question, even if Max found out she’d asked.
“No, but you want it for a good reason. Besides, I owe Max.”
Colette wasn’t sure she really wanted to know the answer, but she couldn’t help asking. “Owe him for what?”
“I wasn’t the most respectable teen,” Brandy said, looking a bit sheepish. “Max busted me with the wrong crowd three years ago in Baton Rouge but agreed to let me go if I would go back to school and ditch my troublemaking friends. He lied to his captain and told him I got away while they were rounding up the others. If anyone had found out, he probably would have been fired.”
“Wow. That was really nice of him.” And totally not the answer Colette had expected. So far, she’d seen only the hard-nosed-cop side of him.
Brandy smiled. “You know how he is.”
“No … actually, I just met him this morning.”
“Oh. I’m sorry. It’s just that you two looked nice together. I guess I figured you were together.”
“No, we—”
Before she could explain, Max stepped back into the off ice.
“We have to leave,” he said.
Brandy handed him the printouts. “Let me know if there’s anything else I can do.”
“I will. Thanks.”
“I hope you find her soon.”
Max nodded and left the office, but not before Colette saw something dark pass over his expression.
“It was nice meeting you,” Colette said to Brandy and hurried out of the office behind Max.
“What’s wrong?” Colette asked as soon as he pulled the car away from the bank.
His jaw flexed and a wave of fear washed over her. Whatever he was about to say, Colette knew it wasn’t going to be something she wanted to hear.
“Alex got a call from the morgue at West Side Hospital.”
Colette felt the blood rush from her face. “Oh, no!”
“I need to take you over there. You’re the only one …”
“Yes, of course.” She stared out the windshield as he made the twenty-minute drive to the hospital, unable to believe it may all be over. That Anna could be inside the morgue on a cold slab of metal.
Somewhere in the back of her mind, she’d known that if things went horribly wrong, she’d have to be the one to identify her friend, but she was completely unprepared for it to happen in a matter of minutes.
She felt as if she was almost out of her body as she walked into the morgue, Max close behind. Feeling numb, she waited while Max spoke with the clerk, who gave her a sad glance, then buzzed them through a secure door. A medical technician met them on the other side. He spoke to them, but Colette didn’t hear his words or Max’s reply.
Anna’s gone. Anna’s gone. The cry repeated in her head.
Finally, they stopped in front of a window with closed blinds, and the tech looked at Colette. “Let me know when you’re ready.”
A chill washed over her and she crossed her arms over her chest. She felt Max’s arm encircle her shoulders. The warmth should have been comforting, but she was too numb to feel it. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, then nodded to the tech.
Every muscle in her body tightened as the tech opened the blinds. She took one look at the girl on the table and almost collapsed.
Chapter Three
“That’s not her,” Colette gasped. “Oh, thank God.”
Everything hit her at once, and she began to cry. Max pulled her close to him and stroked her back. She buried her head in the crook of his shoulder and struggled to get herself together.
“I’m sorry,” she said, as she broke free of the hug and took a step away from him, embarrassed that she’d fallen apart.
“It’s okay,” he said.
“I’m so relieved, and at the same time, it feels wrong to be relieved, because there’s another family that won’t be.”
Max nodded. “Every time I had to bring bad news to a family, there was a tiny voice in the back of my mind giving thanks that it wasn’t my own. That’s not wrong. That’s human.”
“Thank you. I thought I’d prepared myself that things may end this way, but I guess I was fooling myself.”
“There is no preparation for someone close to you dying. If they’re younger than life expectancy and it’s not from natural causes, then that makes it a hundred times harder.”
Colette studied him for a minute, struggling to hide her surprise. The empathy and understanding he shared with her was the last thing she’d expected from the hard-nosed, closed-off cop who had entered her apartment that morning. But then, Brandy’s story about Max had already alerted her to the fact that Max ran a lot deeper than what showed on the surface.
Unfortunately for her, every layer she uncovered made him even more attractive than before, and falling for emotionally unavailable men was her Achilles’ heel. She needed to shut down her overly active imagination and focus on finding Anna. She couldn’t afford to be personally invested in the situation any more than she already was.
“So what’s next?”
“A visit to the bank where Anna made the withdrawal. I’m hoping I can charm them into letting us review the tape of the ATM, maybe see if she was with anyone when she withdrew the money.”
“You don’t have a Brandy tucked away at every branch?”
He grinned. “Unfortunately, no. I’ll have to wing this one.”
