He paused and looked in.

Either a dark-haired yeti had been shedding or there was a wig in the can.

“Katie!”

He pulled the hair from the garbage. It was a wig—a very long, very dark wig.

“Damn!” she cried.

He nodded toward the nearest club, heading straight for the door with her behind him. The bouncer at the door was a big man—ready to throw out the unruly or the underage—but disinterested otherwise.

“Katie, you know her better. Describe her to the bartender,” Dan said.

The bartender was a very pretty topless woman with little specks of silver on her nipples. It didn’t give Katie pause.

“I... Wow, I think I did see your friend!” she told Katie after hearing the description. “Her hair was all messy, and she looked as if she was in a hurry. She headed out the back. It leads to a new place down the back, an all-night diner. If you hurry—”

“Thank you!” Katie called, already heading out.

But the back door just led to the side street off Bourbon. The diner was a door down. Katie hurried toward it, rushing in.

Couples and groups sat about at tables, many looking the worse for wear from their night on Bourbon Street already.

There was no single woman there.

And she wasn’t with any group there.

They hurried back out to the street. But away from Bourbon, all was quiet. There were dozens of directions in which she might have gone.

“Hey. We’ll find her again,” Dan told Katie.

She looked at him, frowning, then lowering her head and nodding. “It was her.”

“I believe you,” he said.

“Maybe the wig can give us something? DNA?”

“Possibly. I’ll make sure Axel gets it into the lab right away.”

“But her DNA might not be in the system.”

“Right again. Katie, we will find her. The likenesses you gave us of Neil Browne and Jennie were excellent. They haven’t put them out to the public yet, but officers everywhere have them. They may well find her tonight. And anyway, now we know she’s here. We will find her.”

“Okay,” she said and breathed deeply. “You believe I saw her, right?”

He smiled. “Yes, I believe...in you. And we have the wig.”

“Right,” she said. “Of course you believe me now. We found the wig.”

Well, maybe it was natural that she didn’t trust him. Their time together had been intense, but it had barely been a day since she had accepted the fact they might be on the same side.