Nothing and nobody else in her life had managed to distract her from her work, but Forest and his buddies always stole thoughts of her job away as she listened to them laugh and talk with both her and each other. Tonight she needed to be distracted more than ever. The mystery of the missing fingers had been shocking. She’d worked lots of crime scenes in her short career, but nothing like this one. The idea that the person responsible for such carnage might also be after her would have chilled her through and through if Forest wasn’t at her side. She cast him a quick glance and smiled. Just looking at him made her feel happy and safe. Happy. It was such an alien emotion for her. She was always satisfied when she finished with a crime scene. She was relatively content when reading her tabloids and munching on cheese puffs in the silence of her room. But she’d never experienced the kind of happy she’d found here.
