He moved aside a kitchen chair and reached for the near empty remains of what had once been his pillow. Millie didn’t even bother hanging her head in guilt over the destruction. Instead, she walked through the mess, scattering feathers in her wake. If it hadn’t been so wet outside, he would have shut her in her kennel while he cleaned up. “Out,” he commanded and pointed to the entryway leading to the living room. Her big brown eyes looked over her shoulder as she slowly left the room. Wasn’t it just like a female to try and make him feel guilty for something she’d done?

Quinn tossed the pillow in the garbage, and feathers floated up and stuck to his shirt. It had been a little over a year since he’d found Amanda and Shawn together. He’d heard that the two had married and now had a kid, a mortgage, and an SUV. Living the American dream, while he was still living la vida loca. Him and Millie. And that was perfectly okay with Quinn. There had been a time when he’d thought he could have it all. When he’d thought he could have a wife, a few kids, and a minivan, but some shit just wasn’t in the cards. Not for Quinn.

He picked the feathers from his shirt and dropped them into the trash. A lot of the cops he knew were on their second or third marriages, and he’d rather be alone than be part of a sad statistic. He had his job and his dog, his mother, two siblings, and seven nieces. That was enough family for anyone. And when he felt the need for female companionship, he knew where to find it. A lot of women found his badge an aphrodisiac. He wanted sex. They wanted sex with a cop. It worked out for both of them. Most of the time, it was enough.

Quinn stood and moved to a coat closet a few feet away. He pulled out a broom and dustpan and pushed Play on his answering machine. While he chased feathers around with the broom, he listened to a recording from the Sears warranty department, advising him the warranty on his refrigerator was about to expire. The second call was from his mother.

“Erin had her ultrasound today,” his mother’s voice informed him. Her long sigh filled the kitchen before she continued, “She’s having another girl.”

Quinn chuckled. Erin was married to Quinn’s brother, Donny. The two already had three girls. The latest would bring the total females in Donny’s house to five. Five to one. Poor bastard. He was doomed.

Another long sigh, then, “Of course we’re happy. But who will carry on the McIntyre name if Donny keeps having girls?”

Quinn was the oldest McIntyre, followed by his sister, Mary, and then Donny. Between Mary and Donny there were seven granddaughters. Quinn didn’t see why he should add any more rowdy children to that mix.

“I ran into Beatrice Garner at Sunday Mass,” his mother informed him as he swept feathers into the dustpan. He didn’t even have to guess at his mother’s point. “Her daughter Vicky works at Dillards. In the children’s department. She’s single and attends St. Mary’s there on State Street.”

“Forget it,” Quinn said as he picked bits of down and feathers from the crotch and thighs of his jeans. The day he’d transferred from narcotics to violent crimes, his mother had taken a moment to thank God that Quinn had given up chasing dopers and getting shot at by crank dealers, then she’d promptly taken it as her mission in life to see him “settled.” Now she was convinced that with the love of a good woman and regular trips to the confessional booth, Quinn would be happy. Whenever he pointed out that the “love of a good woman” had royally screwed him over, his mother countered that Amanda hadn’t been a “good woman.” Among her many sins, she’d been Presbyterian. He’d given up trying to convince his mother that he liked his life just the way it was and that he was as happy as anyone else on the planet.

Her voice rambled on for a few more moments about Father this and Deacon that before she ran out of steam and the machine clicked off. He shoved the garbage can back beneath the sink and leaned the broom against the counter. He tossed the dustpan on the stove, then grabbed a bottle of Labatt from the refrigerator. Maybe if she worried about her own love life, she wouldn’t be so concerned about his. He didn’t know how he felt about his mother dating again so soon after his father’s death. Although, when he thought about it, it had been three years since his father had dropped dead while pruning his mother’s Roses of Sharon.

He picked up his laptop and files from the table where he’d left them earlier and flipped off the lights on his way out of the kitchen. Millie rose and followed at Quinn’s heels as he moved into the living room. With his free hand, he grabbed the remote and turned on the ten o’clock news. He sat on his leather couch and set his laptop and files on the glass coffee table in front of him. Millie sat on the floor next to his knee, and he reached over and scratched beneath her long red ear.

Within the dark comfort of the room, light from the television slipped across the beige carpeting and spilled over the coffee table to the toe of one boot. He watched the weather forecast, which called for more rain. So far, the press hadn’t reported a lot of details concerning Breathless. All the public knew was that three men had been suffocated in their own beds. The method used to suffocate the victims hadn’t been released, nor had the fact that the police believed she was meeting her victims online. The press were cooperating. For now. If one of them thought they were being scooped, that could all change.

The light flickered as the news programming switched to a commercial about insurance. Quinn raised the beer to his lips and watched a gecko dance around on the screen. He’d been a cop for sixteen of his thirty-seven years. The first six of those years he’d spent as a patrol officer before making detective and spending the next six in narcotics. He’d started out eager and naive, thinking he could save the world from drugs and related crime. He’d been raised with a strong moral compass. A clear definition of right and wrong. Good and evil. Black and white. But within a year of hanging out in dive bars and making friends with lowlives, that definition had changed. The line between good and evil had gotten blurred, and black and white had become a constant gray.

The longer he’d worked undercover, the more he’d changed. The more he’d changed, the more the unacceptable had become everyday life until one day he’d looked at himself in the mirror and hadn’t recognized the man he’d become. What he’d seen had been a man with long hair and a beard. A man with hard and unfeeling eyes. He’d liked what he’d seen.

Narc cops had to think fast, talk smooth, and have balls of steel. They were smart and arrogant and convinced of their invincibility, and Quinn had been one of the best. For six years he’d lived in a world of drugs and violence, and he’d gotten off on the grit and spit and taste of it in his mouth. Bringing down big-time drug dealers had been a huge rush. Out-badassing the baddest badass had been an adrenalin high that had lasted for days. There had been nothing like it. His life and his job had become so intertwined that he hadn’t known where one had stopped and the other had begun. The change in him had alarmed and frightened his family, so he’d rarely shown up at family functions, until one day he’d stopped going at all. He’d lived, breathed, and made love to the job. It had become his whole life, and he’d loved every minute of it.

Until it had all come apart.

Quinn took another drink, then lowered the bottle to rest on his thigh. Her name had been Merry, like she should have been happy and cheerful, but there’d never been anything in Merry’s life to cheer about. She’d been a nineteen-year-old whore with a habit to support. Her drug of choice had been black tar heroin, but she’d had a falling out with her boyfriend/dealer after he’d raped and beaten the hell out of her one too many times. The first time Quinn had seen Merry, her eyes had been black and blue and swollen shut. The second time, she’d signed on to be Quinn’s confidential informant and had introduced him to her dealer and supplied him with information.

For the next eight months, Quinn had done what he did the best. He’d laid on the bullshit, slowly making friends with lowlives. Then he’d gotten a phone call in the middle of the night that had blown him out of the water. Merry’s body had been found in a shopping cart in the back of Winco. As he’d stood in a slow, drizzling rain, looking down at her small body and her black chipped fingernail polish, anger had clouded his head and burned a hole in his brain. Eight months of work, down the toilet.

Fuck.

He’d watched a raindrop slide down her forehead and nose. It had dropped on her chin, and something had hit the reset button on the moral compass that had gone horridly off course. A woman was dead, a girl really, and his first thought had been about the job. This time, when he’d looked in the mirror, he hadn’t liked the hard, unfeeling bastard looking back at him. He hadn’t liked what he’d become.

Merry had been Quinn’s CI, and he’d failed her. He’d failed her as a cop, and he’d failed her as a human being. On paper, he’d done everything right. He’d gone strictly by the book, but he should have done more.

In her short life, he’d been just the last man to let her down. Her grandmother had been the only relative to claim her body, and even though he’d failed her in life, there had been something he could do for Merry in death. He’d paid for the funeral, bought the best coffin, and had been one of only a handful to attended the burial. Every year on the anniversary of her murder, he placed pink roses on her headstone. He didn’t even know if she’d liked pink.

Merry had died four years ago, and he still carried the guilt of it in his chest. He figured he always would. A constant reminder to be human, and in a job where he saw the worst in people, it kept him from falling into the us-vs-them mental pit once again.