Monster by Laura Belle Peters Page A

I'd be leaving early.
     
    When I texted Annie, I hoped she'd be asleep, if she'd been up until well after dawn, but she texted back almost immediately.
     
    She said I could come over any time.
     
    I got right in my truck and headed home, barely stopping at red lights.
     
    I needed to be with Annie.
     
    Needed to hold her in my arms, make sure she was okay.
     
    The slam of my truck's door earned me a glare from the elderly woman two houses down, but I didn't care. She could go fuck herself.
     
    It only took three knocks for Annie to open the door. She was probably standing nearby, waiting for me.
     
    She looked small and delicate in an old sweatshirt, her eyes too big, face too pale. The strain on her face was too familiar. I'd seen it dozens of times in the face of young officers coming back from domestic disputes, body retrievals.
     
    Sometimes I'd wanted to hug the female officers, hold them and distract them from their grief, but that would have been a firing offense.
     
    Nothing was stopping me from taking her into my arms, so I did.
     
    It felt so right.
     
    The cracks in my heart were being healed, every moment that we held each other.
     
    "Did you hear?" she asked.
     
    "Hal said. Another girl."
     
    "Kelly Morris." Annie repeated the name like she'd said it a thousand times. Like a mantra. Like the only thing keeping her from breaking.
     
    "Yeah," I said.
     
    I lifted Annie in my arms and carried her over to the couch, enjoying the weight of her body, the smell of her hair.
     
    "We found her," Annie said. Her voice was calm, professional. "She had been dead for almost twelve hours. She'd probably died before anyone knew she was missing."
     
    That was a small mercy.
     
    I'd seen too many families blame themselves, feeling like they should have been able to save their loved ones.
     
    No one could have saved Kelly.
     
    "We found her," the blonde in my arms repeated.
     
    "Urso did?" I asked.
     
    She nodded.
     
    "He did so well," she said. "At the end, he seemed so discouraged. Did you know that the search dogs got so sad when they were looking through the twin towers, finding only bodies, people had to hide for the dogs to find, so they didn't feel like they'd failed."
     
    I'd heard about it.
     
    "Urso didn't fail," I said, trying to keep my voice gentle. It wasn't something I had a lot of practice with. Yelling, swearing, threatening, that was what I was good at. It wouldn't do Annie any good, though. "You didn't fail."
     
    When she turned her face away from me, I knew she was crying.
     
    "I feel like I did," she said. "We went out at one, and it took us almost six hours to find her. If I'd just had Urso air scent instead of tracking, we might have found her sooner. Her mother would have gotten answers sooner."
     
    "You know, that might not have been any kinder," I said. "I've had to tell people that someone they loved died. A few times, they tried to hit me, they told me that they had wanted to keep hoping. They blamed me for making it real. You gave her a few hours where she knew people were working hard for her daughter, but didn't have to face her death."
     
    Annie's shoulders were shaking, and I pulled the quilt off the back of the couch, wrapping her in it and holding her close against me. She felt warm and heavy and perfect.
     
    I found myself worrying about her, worrying about how she'd sleep, how she'd eat, how she'd cope with the horror of her night.
     
    I'd spent over thirty years managing to avoid getting one woman that deep into my heart.
     
    Even Cynthia, I liked her, found myself moving in with her, but it felt so wrong pretty soon. I'd just done it to make the sex more convenient.
     
    Hah.
     
    When we'd stopped fucking as much, we realized we had nothing else to say to each other.
     
    I didn't know why I was thinking about Cynthia with Annie in my arms, but the comparison was very flattering – Annie outshone every other woman who had been in my life.
     
    “You're