The Third Grave (Savannah #4) - Lisa Jackson Page 0,35

of the hurricane, the police department was stretched thin.

Losing an officer, especially a detective of Morrisette’s caliber, didn’t help. She’d been a good cop. A dedicated cop. A do-anything-for-justice cop. The department missed her. Hell, Reed missed her.

He glanced over at Morrisette’s empty desk and frowned, a hollow feeling in his gut.

It would ebb in time.

He knew that.

But for now there was a distinct void in his life.

More than one, he thought sadly as he remembered the panicked early-morning drive to the hospital with Nikki, her face white as chalk, the deep regret and aching sadness in her eyes despite him saying over and over again, “It’ll be all right, Nikki. Hang in there. It’s all gonna be all right.” He’d known differently, of course, as he’d punched the accelerator and sped through the near-empty streets, the Jeep’s emergency lights flashing on the short, frantic trip to the hospital. He’d slid a glance in her direction. “We’re gonna be okay.”

Nikki had seen through his lie and nervously cracked the window. “I don’t know if we’ll ever be ‘okay,’” she’d admitted as he’d careened into the parking lot. The Jeep slid to a stop at the glass doors of the emergency room, the same doors he’d walked through only an hour earlier, and he’d hustled her inside.

From then on it had been a blur, a tangle of emotion.

Nikki’s OB/GYN had met them in the ER.

Devoid of makeup, her hair in a loose, messy bun, Dr. Kasey had taken the call from the answering service and rushed to the hospital. After a quick exam in the ER, she’d somberly delivered the news they’d already expected: Nikki was miscarrying. There would be no baby. Not now. They would have to wait, but in a few months and blah, blah, blah. The same litany they’d heard before.

He wondered if it would ever happen, if they would ever have a pregnancy go to term, and told himself if it didn’t happen, he would be okay. Maybe. But Nikki? He felt a bitter sadness deep inside. As hard as it was on him, it was worse for Nikki. He knew that. He’d seen it in the pain in her eyes. The misery. And the regret.

“Hell,” he muttered under his breath, and rolled his chair back to the desk again. He wouldn’t think about all that now. Nor would he consider the tension that existed in his marriage. So many harsh words had been uttered, so many apologies left unspoken.

He glanced over to Morrisette’s empty desk again. He’d been out when someone had cleaned out her desk and he hadn’t seen who had taken all of Morrisette’s things—her pictures of her kids, a silver boot paperweight, a sharpshooter award all hidden in a messy stack of paperwork, coffee cups and half-empty packs of gum. There had been a pot with a half-dead cactus that she’d never watered in one corner, neglected but too stubborn to die. Now the workspace was empty, the computer monitor dark, her chair tucked neatly into place.

So unfamiliar.

So sterile.

He’d managed to snag one memento from Morrisette’s desk drawer before someone had cleaned everything from her workspace. A ring of keys with a Lone Star. He’d slipped the keys from the ring, left them in her desk drawer, and fingering the sharp points of the star, pocketed the token. He figured she would’ve wanted him to have it. And even if not, too bad.

A reminder.

At least for now.

But the loss of his unborn child was different. No memento for a kid who hadn’t come into the world. Just heartbreak.

The desk wouldn’t be empty long. He’d been advised that Delacroix would soon occupy the space, that she, a junior detective, efficient but still a newbie to the department, would be his new partner.

“A temporary move,” Sergeant Sanya Jones, her words emphasized by the slightest of Jamaican accents, had told him. She’d transferred from Miami several years ago and ran the department with an easy smile and an iron fist. “Let’s just see if it works out.”

He’d wanted to argue, not so much that he had anything against Delacroix other than she was a little wet behind the ears, but because neither Delacroix nor anyone else would be able to fill Sylvie Morrisette’s beat-up boots.

God, he’d miss her.

There was a sharp rap on the half-open door to his office. Reed looked up to spy Jade Delacroix poking her head inside. “Got a sec?”

“Sure.”

In a pair of jeans, black T-shirt and jacket, Delacroix slipped into the room.