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asked his partner as the ME’s assistant rolled up a gurney with a black body bag draped over it. “We should head for the station and get a jump on it.”
    “ Yeah, but gimme a sec.”
    Angel talked to Schumacher and the ME’s assistant one last time before she joined him again. They shoved through the media line without incident, and as they walked back to their vehicles, his partner didn’t say much until—
    “Why do you talk to them?” she asked.
    “ Schumacher and O’Brien? Good question.”
    Angel stifled a smile. “You know what I mean. You talk to dead people, Gabe. That doesn’t exactly make you a spokesperson for the Mental Health Association. Do the dead ever have anything worthwhile to say?”
    “ More than Schumacher and O’Brien. Trust me.” He shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans and kept walking. He felt comfortable in the silence between them. “Talking to the dead reminds me they were a daughter or a son. Or someone made love to them, or they had childhood fights with a sister or brother. They aren’t just stiffs, you know?”
    “ Yeah, I can see that.”
    When she got to her ride, Angel didn’t get in right away. She leaned against her vehicle and waited for him to say more. Like a good cop—and an even better partner—she knew he hadn’t told her everything.
    “You’re not letting me off the hook, are you?”
    “ Would you?” She cocked her head and smiled.
    “ Good point.”
    He looked down and kicked a stone, unsure what he’d say. Lying about his past came too easily. With most people he didn’t care, but lying to Angel felt wrong, like Manny would look over her shoulder and call him on his bullshit. He couldn’t see staring into her eyes and yanking her chain, not about this. He’d felt closer to Angel after she married Manny, as if she were family.
    In the end, he resorted to the truth.
    “ When I was eight, my parents were murdered. I came home from school and found them. It was brutal, Angel. One of the bloodiest crime scenes I’ve ever seen, and that’s sayin’ something.”
    No matter how straightforward he made it sound, the words had always been hard to hear, especially coming from his own mouth. The anger he felt was never far from the surface, even though he’d worked hard to disguise it. He’d certainly found ways to release the rage. The fight club was only one. His life had stopped that day, and the stigma had always been a part of him. There was no getting around that.
    “After my family was butchered, I learned not to get too attached to anything, especially people.” He stared into the dark, unable to look at her. “Whatever life a kid is supposed to have, I got that taken away, and the system never helped.”
    His mind flashed back to when his world had been ripped apart. What had happened to his mother and father had been vicious and perverted. The suffocating stench of their crime scene and the horrified looks on their faces had ripped his heart out. The torture they had endured before they died enraged him, even now. No human being deserved to die like that. When he worked crime scenes as a cop, some murders were worse than others for him, but he had never told a partner about his family until now. Telling his story to Angel made it different.
    “You know…I want to believe there’s more to all this,” he said. “I wake up some nights with a knot in my belly, thinking ‘ what if this is all there is .’ My parents were cheated of their one chance. Some animal stole their lives, and the bastard got away with it, but that wasn’t good enough. He took me down too. I got a life’s sentence.”
    It never took much to tip him over the edge when he talked about what had happened. His breathing went out of control, and his heart thumped harder like on those awful nights when he’d wake up in a cold sweat. But when he looked at Angel, he suddenly remembered where he was and knew he’d been an inconsiderate moron. He hadn’t given