“It’s one of the ugliest cases I’ve ever worked on, Ali. You already spend your days soaking up other people’s crap. Why would you want more soul pollution?”

“And you? What about your soul?”

“Such as it is.”

“I won’t accept that it doesn’t affect you.”

Unborn children . . .

I didn’t answer.

She said, “You can handle it, but I can’t?”

“I don’t ask you about patients.”

“That’s different.”

“Maybe it really isn’t.”

“Fine,” she said. “So now there’s a new taboo in our relationship. What binds us together? Hot sex?”

I pointed to the toast. “And haute cuisine.”

She worked at a smile. Got up and took the mug to the sink, where she emptied and washed. “I’d better be going.”

“Stay.”

“Why?”

I walked behind her, slipped my arm around her waist. Felt her abdominal muscles ripple as she tensed up. She removed my hand, turned, and looked up at me. “I’ve probably put some kind of wedge between us. Maybe I’ll wake up tomorrow and feel like a first-class idiot, but right now I’ve still got some righteous indignation burning in my belly.”

I said, “The higher stakes are six murders, maybe seven. If you include the girl who succeeded Beth as Daney’s assistant. She seems to have vanished and she’s not on the foster rolls.”

She stepped out of my arms, braced herself against the counter, and stared out the kitchen window.

“Plus a toddler,” I went on. “Two teenage boys, three women, a mentally challenged young man. And so far, no way to prove any of it.”

She lowered her head into the sink, heaved and dry-retched.

I tried to hold her as she shuddered.

“Sorry,” she whimpered, pulling away. Splashing water on her face, she dried it with her sleeve. Snatched up her purse and keys, left the kitchen.

I caught up as she opened the front door. “You’re exhausted. Stay. I’ll take the couch.”

Her lips were parched and tiny blood spots freckled her cheeks. Petechiae from the strain of vomiting. “It’s a nice offer. You’re a nice man.”

“I’d like to be a good man.”

Her eyes shifted. “I need to be alone.”

CHAPTER 40

CHAPTER 40

I returned to the kitchen, chewed on the toast I’d made Allison, and thought about what had just happened.

Tomorrow I might also wake up feeling rotten. If I slept at all. Right now I was glad to be alone, reunited with the possibilities that had flooded my head.

It was eleven-fifteen. I figured Milo wouldn’t be sleeping much either. And if he had drifted off, too damn bad.

* * *

“What time is it?” he rasped.