“Do you think I’m stupid?” he said abruptly, and there was an edge to his voice she hadn’t heard before. “I lived in your world, Sergeant Warren, playing hardball with the best of them. I know a skeptic when I meet her. And I recognize bullshit when it’s shoveled at me. You’re a cop. You have no interest in healing. Your job is to judge. And you are extremely good at your job.”

In spite of herself, D.D. felt her hackles rising. “Hey, now—”

“She hurts,” he continued. “I feel Danielle’s pain and it calls to me, only because it’s so unnecessary. But not everyone wants to heal. I accept her choice, just as I accept that you will never truly believe what I say until it’s too late.”

“Too late?”

“Something’s coming. It’s powerful. It has purpose.”

“Tell me what you want, Andrew.”

“I want you to be careful, Sergeant Warren. Spirits don’t want something. They always want someone.”

Andrew clicked off the phone. Apparently, she’d pissed him off enough. Which was just as well, given that he’d confused her enough.

Negative energies, forces of evil, dark tidings.

D.D. thought of tonight’s scene, a nine-year-old girl’s forlorn body, swaying from a noose. D.D. didn’t need to be policing the spiritual interplanes. She had her hands full enough on this one.

She finally made it down the stairwell. She pushed open the heavy door, worked her away across the nearly empty space. She decided there was no sound quite as lonely as a single set of footsteps echoing through a vacant parking garage.

She was tired. She did hurt. Lightfoot had been right about some things.

She rounded a broad support pillar and discovered Alex Wilson waiting beside her vehicle. She stopped walking. They eyed each other. He had shadows under his eyes. Stubble across his cheeks. Wrinkles in his once crisp white dress shirt.

“Before … I was wrong,” D.D. said.

“Yeah?”

“Sometimes, I do need a man to take care of me.”

He nodded. “That’s okay; sometimes, I do need a woman to stroke my ego.”

“You look like hell,” she told him.

“Compliment enough for me. Come on. I’ll drive you home.”

She followed him to his car, leaving her vehicle to be retrieved later.

He drove the first five minutes in silence. It gave her a chance to lean her head against the warm window glass and close her eyes. Morning would be coming. Maybe it was already here. She could open her eyes and look for the sun, but she wasn’t ready yet. She needed this moment, dark and contained, inside herself.

“Andrew Lightfoot called,” she said presently, eyes still shut.

“What did he want?”

“To warn me that something wicked this way comes.”

“Can it fashion a noose and does it have an address?”