Expire by Danielle Girard

Author:Danielle Girard [Girard, Danielle]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781542040259
Published: 2019-07-08T16:00:00+00:00

27

Thursday, 6:30 a.m. PST

Hal woke to the smell of coffee and the soft purr of the Nespresso maker through the closed bedroom door. It smelled like Anna. The scent of rose on the sheets. He lifted his head and remembered, the moment of peace shattering.

He palmed his phone on the bedside table, hoping for something.

His three nephews and his niece grinned in the background picture he’d taken six or seven years ago. The youngest, just a few weeks old then, nestled in the arms of the oldest. He studied James’s tiny infant face. “James reminds me of you as a baby,” his mother had told him when they were alone. James’s father, his brother-in-law, might not appreciate hearing his child looked more like his wife’s brother than him. But his sister Becca had said it, too.

He stared at the tiny flat nose and the swollen pink lips. What would his baby look like? Would he or she look more like Anna? Or like him? How would their genes mix?

And what if he never got to see the baby? He felt as though someone were carving into his chest with a spoon.

Buster snored on the floor near the window.

Hal sat on the edge of the bed, willing himself to move. He held the phone tight in his fist and then threw it hard on the bed. How he would have loved to hear it explode against the wall. But he couldn’t afford to break that phone. It had to be working when she called or when someone found her and called him.

From the bed, the phone rang. Hailey Wyatt.

“Hey,” he said, struggling to keep his voice calm. Who would the call about Anna come from? Telly? Hailey? His captain? “What’s up?”

“Theobold is in the morgue. Says we can come meet him in an hour.”

She started to say something else, but the words became a blur. The results from last night’s stabbing. The morgue. Anna’s morgue. He shook his head, cleared his throat, and interrupted her. “I talked to a couple of the homeless who regularly sleep near Union Square. They were pretty drunk last night, so I wanted to go back and talk to them again this morning. And there are a few more I’d like to chase down before they pick up and move for the day.” He tried to slow his speech, to disguise the obvious panic in his words. He could not go to the morgue. “Why don’t you go see—” He couldn’t remember the guy’s name. The acting ME.

Her voice was pinched. “Hal.”

“We’ll catch up after. We’ve got three murders to work. We’re behind the eight ball here. If we can clear these—” He shut his mouth. He was going to say that if they could clear these, then he could get back to looking for Anna.

Hailey’s voice was soft. “We should meet up first. Roger’s going to be in the lab in forty minutes. We’ll go over the victims and the evidence, touch base on where we are.

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