A chill ran through her now, twisting and coiling in the bottom of her stomach.

The Baggie dribbled ice water down the back of her neck, and she flinched and swore under her breath.

"Hey, Broussard." Deputy Ossie Compton sucked in his stomach and sidled past her through the doorway to the break room. "I heard you were a cold one. How come that ice is melting?"

Annie shot him a wry look. "Must be all your hot air. Compton."

He gave her a wink, his grin flashing white in his dark face. "My hot charm, you mean."

"Is that what you call it?" she teased. "Here I thought it was gas."

Laughter rolled behind her, Compton 's included.

"You got him again, Annie," Prejean said.

"I quit keeping score," she said, glancing back down the hall toward the sheriff's office. "It got to where it was just cruel."

The shift would change in twenty minutes. Guys coming on for the evening wandered in to BS with the day shift before briefing. The Hunter Davidson incident was the hot topic of the day.

"Man, you shoulda seen Fourcade!" Savoy said with a big grin. "He moves like a damn panther, him! Talk about!"

"Yeah. He was on Davidson like that." Prejean snapped his fingers. "And there's women screaming and the gun going off and nine kinds of hell all at once. It was a regular goddamn circus."

"And where were you during all this, Broussard?" Chaz Stokes asked, turning his pale eyes on Annie.

Tension instantly rose inside her as she returned the detective's stare.

"At the bottom of the pile," Sticks Mullen snickered, flashing a small mouth overcrowded with yellow teeth. "Where a woman belongs."

"Yeah, like you'd know." She tossed her dripping ice bag into the trash. "You read that in a book, Mullen?"