16

Max rolled out of bed in the morning. He had made up his mind the night before. This was it. This was half a life for him to live, and he didn’t want to continue this. Henni and Mack were right. They had put it right in front of him, and he wasn’t dumb, so he saw it clearly. He went to go start the pot of coffee and put something on. As he was the one who could basically handle a case any way he chose, too, he knew that he would be driving out to the small town that he grew up in.

That was the only way forward. He also knew that was the last place on the face of the earth he wanted to go to. This was for himself, and on a different level, this was for the victim. He knew that he had to separate the two things. He had to start thinking of the victim as that. She was just the victim of a crime.

When he normally caught a case, he had to get to know the victim to understan