LITMIR.BIZ

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reasons she could sleep at all and still be able to do the kind of work she did. She gave families peace of mind. She couldn’t bring a loved one back, but knowing what had happened built a bridge to healing. Without it, becoming whole again would always be on the opposite shore, out of reach.

      Deacon, who had been quiet up until now, folded his arms. Strong, silent type? He seemed to take everything in. See what most people couldn’t because they were too busy talking, trying to get a point across.

      “Any idea what he used?” she asked T-Rex.

      “Hatchet, maybe.” T-Rex shook his head. “She was young. Whole life ahead of her.”

      She liked that he thought of the people who landed on his table in terms of being real human beings. People with parents, spouses, children. She’d heard stories of other coroners who’d mentally detached to the point they thought of people as projects.

      “It’s awful.” Leah could only hope her friend Millie had been taken to someone as caring.

      “She fought back, though,” he stated.

      “Good for her.” Leah knew she would. There was no way she’d ever go down easy if faced with a similar situation. She’d take out an eye or anything else she could of her attacker. For one, she wouldn’t stop trying to break free until she took her last breath. Secondly, she knew that she’d leave behind valuable DNA evidence if she clawed and kicked.

      Millie had willingly gone with her abductor. With what Leah knew now, she realized she and Millie had probably known the person who’d taken her. He was most likely someone they trusted.

      “I heard her ankle was cut clean. That true?” Leah asked.

      “Yes.” T-Rex led them inside the frigid room. The wall with drawers still made her queasy as she walked toward it but she swallowed the bile rising in her throat.

      He stopped at the last one on the right, bottom drawer. He pulled out a long table. Deacon watched as the body bag was unzipped and then the face of a woman who looked frozen in time, Jane Doe, was revealed. She was found on a playground swing after a pair of nights with temperatures in the teens. At first blush, it looked like she’d frozen to death until Leah walked around behind the body and saw a bullet hole.

      He shook his head. “It’s not her.”

      T-Rex attended to sealing up as Leah thanked him for his time. Deacon followed her outside, still saying very little. In the parking lot, Leah paused at her sedan. Deacon had slipped on sunglasses from his jacket pocket and between those and his Stetson his eyes were hooded.

      “There a place we can grab a cup of coffee?” he asked.

      She needed to pick his brain about the heifers for a few minutes before he disappeared out of her life. “There’s a little place around the corner.”

      “I’ll follow you.” She ignored the deep rumble rippling through his voice. Any other circumstances and she’d want to get to know Deacon Kent better on a personal level. She knew deep down she’d never allow herself to get close to a man like him. There was something different about him, something she couldn’t quite pinpoint but felt like a threat. Maybe it was the fact he was the kind of person she could fall for. Being near him brought out feelings she’d thought long since dead. Besides, she had Connor to think about, and after dating Charles Dougherty, the last thing she needed to do was complicate her life further. She’d done a bang-up job with the last one.

      Leah hopped into her sedan and led the way to Marvin’s Diner. It was one of those eateries that looked like a silver bullet train on the outside, complete with red vinyl benches and ’70s throwback decor on the inside.

      She parked away from the front door where there were two parking spots together in the almost full lot. Marvin’s was always bristling with activity at this time and kept hours from 5:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. Breakfast and lunch were all that was on the menu. Ask any cop what he or she had in common with New York City cabdrivers and he or she would say both always knew the best places to eat.

      Leah got out of her car and waited for Deacon. Again, her heart thudded against her rib cage when she saw him. He’d taken off his sunglasses and hat, leaving them inside his pickup. Rays of sunlight streaked his hair. His eyes were steel gray.

      Detective Andrew McKeever, aka Keeve, came walking out the door to Marvin’s as Deacon made a move for the handle.

      “Hello, Keeve.” Leah felt compelled to greet the man. He was one of Charles’s closest friends—which wasn’t saying a lot since Charles had pushed nearly everyone out of his life—and had been cold-shouldering Leah ever since the breakup. Keeve needed to get over it and she figured she’d kill him with kindness because the two of them had always had a solid professional relationship. Years ago, marrying Connor’s father, a detective, had made her think it would be okay to see someone socially from work. She quickly realized after Charles the flaws in that thinking. Because she and Wyatt Cordon had had a beautiful child together, whereas she and Charles had had a fling that ended badly, leaving a whole bunch of messiness in its wake.

      Keeve’s gaze bounced from her to Deacon and back. His face muscles tensed. “Detective.”

      That one word had such a dismissive quality in it that Leah didn’t bother to respond.

      Keeve walked right past her, his gaze locking on to Deacon whose face of hard angles and planes gave away nothing of his reaction.

      As they headed inside, Sunny Bowman, the diner’s most popular waitress, grabbed two menus. “How many in your party, hon?”

      “The two of us,” Deacon responded.

      She smiled at him and her cheeks flamed. Leah could only hope her own reaction to seeing Deacon for the first time wasn’t so obvious. A stab of jealousy she had no right to own caught her off guard.

      “Right this way, Detective,” Sunny said. She was midthirties but looked older when Leah focused on the lines etched in the woman’s face. Her poufy white hair was in pigtails and her lashes were so long they practically touched her eyebrows. Sunny worked her hips when she walked and good food wasn’t the only reason so many male officers hung out at the diner.

      Sunny stopped at a booth in the far corner, Leah’s favorite, and spun around with her arm out like she was presenting a new car to a game show winner.

      “Thanks, Sunny,” Leah said. Before today, Sunny’s flirtatious personality hadn’t felt like fingernails on a chalkboard.

      To Deacon’s credit, he didn’t seem to notice. Was it his good upbringing that made him such a gentleman? She’d read about his family. The Kents seemed like the best of the best, unlike her family, which was all surface and no substance. Her parents had tried to persuade her to at least become an attorney if she insisted on going down the path of criminal justice. When she’d told them she wanted to be a cop and then a homicide detective, they’d gone down a familiar road, reminding her she couldn’t bring her friend back by putting herself in danger. She’d have liked to believe they were worried about her safety, but then she’d heard her mother on the phone with Leah’s aunt, talking about how embarrassing it was that Leah didn’t have more ambition. That she’d always be stuck feeling sorry for herself for losing her best friend. Her mother had no idea then and nothing had improved since.

      “Did you want coffee, Detective?” Sunny blinked at Leah expectantly.

      “Yes. Thank you.” Leah must’ve zoned out there for a second.

      “And for you?” Sunny’s smile widened when she looked at Deacon, who didn’t look up from the menu.

      “I would, thanks.”

      “Cream and sugar?” she asked.

      “Black.”

      “Same for me,” Leah said, unable to suppress a satisfied smirk. Based on the look on Sunny’s face, she wasn’t used to being anything other than the center of attention from male patrons.

      It was probably

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