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possible.”
    Tully and Racine exchanged a look and Stan noticed.
    “What is it?” he asked.
    “The victim out by the Dumpster. Her face is bashed in.”

CHAPTER 15

    It was complicated . That’s what Maggie wanted to tell Ben.
    In just a little over a year Benjamin Platt had gone from being her doctor to her friend to her … what? What were they exactly?
    Boyfriend, girlfriend sounded sophomoric. And although they had shared a hotel room— and a bed, once —as well as many intimate thoughts and conversations, they weren’t lovers. Yet .
    Just when both of them confided that they wanted to be more than friends Ben had put the skids on. All it took was his admission that he wanted children, and Maggie found herself backing off, way off.
    His only daughter had died five years ago, ending his marriage and causing him to focus all his energy on his career. Maggie had buried herself in her work, too, ever since her divorce. But Ben still ached for his daughter. And while he longed to replace that ache, Maggie wanted to shield herself from another potential loss. Being alone was safer than feeling too much.
    Yes, it was complicated.
    But she was glad to see him. So why didn’t she tell him that? He was still her friend. Partly because he had reverted to acting like her doctor as soon as he crossed the exam room threshold.
    “An occupational hazard,” he had said when he saw her impatience with his incessant questions. But then he continued, “Did you lose consciousness? Any blurred vision? Dizziness?”
    “I’m fine.” And she finally put up her hands in surrender. “Tully insisted. That’s all.”
    And she convinced herself that this lapse back to a doctor-patient relationship was enough reason not to tell him that her head still throbbed, that she’d been getting killer headaches for months now.
    Ben had been her doctor at USAMRIID after Maggie was exposed to the Ebola virus. She had been in the Slammer, an isolation unit. No one could talk to her without an inch-thick glass wall in between. No one could touch her without wearing a blue hazmat suit. Her conversations with Ben had kept her from panicking, from diving deep inside herself. When they discovered they both loved classic movies, Ben had used them to entertain and transport her to another world outside the Slammer’s walls. He had shown her how to escape reality to gain a grasp on sanity.
    Dr. Benjamin Platt—army colonel, scientist, soldier—was one of the strongest, most gentle men she’d ever met. There were times when he looked at her and she felt as though he could see so deep inside her that he must have gotten a glimpse of her soul. He understood her, sometimes more than she understood herself. And for the last several months what she had started to feel for him scared the hell out of her.
    He offered to take her home. Her car was still at the fire site and she asked if he would drop her there instead. Besides, she wanted to get back to the investigation. She didn’t want Kunze to have any more ammunition against her than this little trip to the ER had already given him.
    Ben suggested breakfast first. Before he could slip back into his role as doctor, Maggie asked, “Are you sure you have time? You look dressed for something important.”
    She wanted to lighten the mood and almost added, Who died? Then she was very glad she had not, when Ben said he had a funeral to attend later. Another soldier, another comrade coming home in a box.
    She didn’t know how he stayed strong and positive with so much death around him. She told him that once and he said he wondered the same thing about her.
    “But my dead people are usually strangers,” Maggie had told him. Which wasn’t exactly true. By the time she closed the file on a murder case she often knew more about the victim than his or her family did. And sometimes the victims had been people she knew. Always, she knew much more about the killers than she ever cared to know.
    She chose the