From far away, she heard Alex swear, over and over, but she could only stare, frozen, until his body blocked her view. He had his hands on her shoulders, squeezing. God, she was cold, Bess thought. She’d never been so cold.

“I want you to go downstairs.”

She managed to lift her gaze from his chin to his eyes. The iced fury in them had her shivering. “What?”

He nearly swore again. She was white as a sheet, and her pupils had contracted until they were hardly bigger than the point of a pin. “Go downstairs, Bess.” He tried to rub the chill out of her arms, knowing he couldn’t. “Are you listening to me?” he said, his voice quiet, gentle.

“Yes.” She moistened her lips, pressed them together. “I’m sorry, yes.”

“Go down, stay in the lobby. Don’t say anything, don’t do anything, until Judd or I come down. Okay?” He gave her a little shake, and wondered what he would do if she folded on him. “Okay?”

She took one shaky breath, then nodded. “She’s…so young.” With an effort, she swallowed the sickness that kept threatening to rise in her throat. “I’m all right. Don’t worry about me. I’m all right,” she repeated, then turned away to go downstairs.

“She shouldn’t have seen this,” Judd said. His own stomach was quivering.

“Nobody should see this.” Banking down on every emotion, Alex closed the door at his back.

She stuck it out, refusing to budge when Judd came down to drive her home. After finding an old chair, she settled into a corner while the business of death went on around her. From her vantage point, she watched them come and go—forensics, the police photographer, the morgue.

Detached, she studied the people who crowded in, asking questions, making comments, being shuffled out again by blank-faced cops.

There was grief in her for a girl she hadn’t known, a fury at the waste of a life. But she remained. Not because of the job. Because of Alex.

He was angry with her. She understood it, and didn’t question it. When they were finished at the scene, she rode in silence in the back of the car. Back at the station, she took the same chair she’d had that morning.

Hours went by, endlessly long. At one point she slipped out and bought Alex and Judd sandwiches from a deli. After a time, he went into another room. She followed, still silent, noted a board with pictures tacked to it. Horrible pictures.

She looked away from them, took a chair and listened while Alex and other detectives discussed the latest murder and the ongoing investigation.

Later, she rode with him back to the pawnshop. Waited patiently while he questioned Boomer again. Waited longer while he and Judd returned to the motel to reinterview the clerk, the tenants.

Like them, she learned little about Crystal LaRue. Her name had been Kathy Segal, and she’d once lived in Wisconsin. It had been hard, terribly hard, for Bess to listen when Alex tracked down and notified her parents. Hard, too, to understand from Alex’s end of the conversation that they didn’t care. For them, their daughter had already been dead.