“It had been a little over a year since the last murder; moreover it had been a year since I had run as quickly as legally possible from whom I had been. It had taken almost that long to become a legal adult, get the money straightened out and get my name changed. Who was Abigail? Who was Vera? I felt as though I was neither person. I felt like I wasn’t a person at all anymore.”

“The hole where my heart had finally grown back after the loss of my parents was returning because of the very person who had filled the void”

“Tad they were too young to die…My Mom was a spitfire—a total accident waiting to happen. I’m like her—I can trip over nothing.” Tad chuckled acknowledging the thought. “My father…he was more serious. He used to give me lectures like no tomorrow, he had a strong sense of who I should be—who I wanted to be and how to guide me, and he was my best friend. It seems like everything I love is just out of my reach now.”

“It's been so long since I had sex, I can't remember who gets tied up, anymore.”

“Even though it had only been two weeks since I’d seen him last, it felt like months, and sometimes I found myself wondering if our brief time together had been real at all. Yeah, it had been real. I had a heart that was cracked in two as a souvenir of just how real it all was.”

“I know who you are...I've fallen hard for that person, and I sure as hell am not going to let you fade into your past.”

“As I made my way out of the apartment and got in my patrol car I realized that it wasn't too late to stop myself from getting hardened and losing my sense of compassion. It dawned on me that it had been almost two years--almost to the very day--that I had been sworn in as a police officer. And over the last two years, I had seen lots of situations, many of them with tragic outcomes. I had been made completely aware of the degrees to which people would go to get revenge, to get high, to get laid, to get off easy and to get away with something--even to the point of telling outrageous lies about my own conduct.”