Dani was the shortest trooper the state police had ever hired, but she was sturdily built. The uniform hadn’t been designed for female officers, but underneath the ill-fitting clothes she had the body of a former gymnast. Her face was square; her eyes a stony gray. She wore her dark-blond hair pinned up with barrettes. Most men considered her plain. But the longer I had known her, the lovelier she had become to me. She had more grit than any of the men in her barracks and a heart twice the size of mine.

“Jesus Christ!”

“Hey.”

“What did those SOBs do to you?”

“Everything they could. At the end, I managed to avoid losing my leg to a chainsaw, but it was a close call.”

She came over and lightly took my hand, the one that didn’t have an IV needle threaded into a vein. “Why didn’t you tell me what you were up to when we were on the phone? I had to hear about you nearly dying from Ellen Pomerleau.”

“I thought I had everything in hand. Besides, you were so excited about your interview with Jemison.”

“I should be pissed at you, but you look so damn pathetic I can’t do it. What happened, Mike? What did those people put you through?”

“Later,” I said. “I went through it all with Pomerleau and Finch, and I don’t have it in me. Ellen can fill you in on the details.”

“I don’t want the official version,” she said, showing the frustration she’d tried to suppress. “Oh, Mike, why do you have to be so fucking reckless?”

“That’s who I am, Dani. You should know that by now.”

She set her broad-brimmed hat down on the wheeled cart beside the bed. “I guess I should. I guess I do.”

“There you go then.”

She let her gaze drift around the room with all its pumping, blinking medical wonders. “I used to think it was cool. I remember watching you jump thirty feet into a quarry to pull a girl out of a sinking car and I thought, Holy shit! But it’s been exhausting being in a relationship with someone who risks everything all the time.”

“You have to be willing to die to do the job.”

Her cheeks flushed as she turned to me. “Don’t give me that. You enjoy taking risks. You live for the danger.”

“I can’t apologize for being who I am.”

“I used to think you’d grow out of it, but now I know you won’t.”

“‘Women think men will change, and men think women won’t.’ That was one of my mom’s favorite quotes.”

“I wish I’d met her.”

“She would have liked you. She would have thought you were good for me.”