To think of a predator like Willard Roache running loose in this atmosphere was enough to make Annie's blood run cold. A rapist in a Mardi Gras mask amid a sea of masks… and a heavily armed citizenry twitching at every shadow… They could certainly have ended up with a morgue full of bullet-ridden corpses instead of one dead Roache.

Annie edged her way along between the crowd and the storefronts, keeping her eyes open for anyone taking an undue interest in merchandise in the display windows. A knot of little boys of nine or ten stampeded past, blasting squirt guns. She fended off a stream with her hand, turning away and coming face-to-face again with the white painted mask.

He stood no more than a foot from her, near enough that she started at the sight of him.

"Do I know you?" she asked.

His painted face grinned at her as he handed her the string of a heart-shaped helium balloon. He pressed his hands to his chest dramatically then held them out to her, symbolically giving her his heart.

Puzzled, Annie sized up her masked admirer-his height, his build. Realization dawned with an eerie chill.

"Marcus?"

He raised a finger to his painted mouth and backed away, melting into the crowd, anonymous. But she knew who it was. It made perfect sense. The mask offered both freedom and secrecy. He hadn't been able to walk down the street in this town for months without drawing unwanted attention. Now he moved unnoticed past people who would have spit on him or worse had they known he was behind the smiling mask.

And what would the good townsfolk of Bayou Breaux do to her if they saw her taking romantic tokens from Marcus Renard? What would her fellow cops do? She would be further ridiculed and punished. They already had that in common, she and Marcus.

Annie looked at the balloon. He had given her his heart, and she had accepted it. God only knew how significant that would be in his mind. He wanted to believe she cared for him, just as he had wanted to believe Pam had cared for him. He believed the job was what kept her from him, just as he had believed Donnie had been the barrier between himself and Pam. Juliet and Romeo.

She handed the balloon to a little girl with a Pocahontas T-shirt and chocolate all over her face, and moved down the street.

A clown in a rainbow fright wig staggered toward her on the narrow band of sidewalk. The painted smile was lopsided beneath a rubber hog snout. Annie stepped right. The clown moved with her. She stepped left the same time he did. She turned to the side to motion him past. He swayed toward her instead, hitting her shoulder and spilling his beer down the front of her uniform.

"Hey, Bozo, watch it!" she snapped.

"Sorry, ociffer!" he declared, unrepentant.

From her left side a second drunk stumbled into her, this one wearing a Reagan mask with a vacuous idiot grin. Another eight ounces of beer cascaded down her back.

"Shit!" she yelped. "Watch where you're going!"

"Sorry, ociffer!" he said with singsong insincerity. He looked at the clown and the pair of them chuckled like Beavis and Butthead.

Annie glared at the rubber face, which sat atop a pair of bony shoulders. She looked down at the skinny stick legs in tight jeans.

"Son of a bitch!" she swore, grabbing hold of him by the shirtfront. "Mullen, is that you inside that empty head?"

The clown hollered, "Shit!"

Reagan stumbled back from her, pulling himself free. The two plunged into the gyrating crowd, laughing.

"Dammit!" Annie said, half under her breath, plucking at her saturated shirtfront.

The beer trickled down into the waistband of her pants, front and back. It ran down inside her body armor in front and soaked through the back. Anyone getting a whiff of her was going to think the stories about her recent sad decline into alcoholism were more than just rumors.

"Sarge, it's Broussard," she said into the two-way as she started up the street. "I just got doused. I'm 10-7 at the station. Back in a few. Out."

"Hurry the hell up."

She made her way north along the back side of the crowd, intending to cut east at the corner of Seventh, where she had parked her cruiser on the side street.

"Annie!"

A.J.'s voice caught her ear and she pulled up. He had left three messages on her machine at home and had tried to get her at work twice since she had been shot at, and she had avoided calling him back. She didn't want to explain. She didn't want to lie. She didn't want him trying to tie a knot in the connection she had severed between them.

He came toward her from the yellow light of a vendor's stand, a red-checked cardboard basket of fried oysters cradled in one hand, a bottle of Abita in the other. He was still in his suit from the day's business, though his tie was jerked loose.

"I thought you were off the street."

Annie shrugged. "I go where they tell me. I'm on my way to the station now. I just got a beer bath."

"I'll walk you to your car."

He fell in step beside her and she glanced up at him, trying to gauge his mood. His face was drawn and a deep line dug in between his brows. The noise of the band and the crowd faded as they turned the corner and walked away from the bright yellow light of the party.

"Why'd you work late?" Annie asked. "Friday night. Big dance and all."

"I-ah-sorta lost my standing date."

She kicked herself mentally for opening that door.

"Task force moved at the speed of light to get the background on Roache, didn't they?"

"Yeah," she said. "Too bad they couldn't have found that enthusiasm earlier. Maybe they could have nailed his ass after Jennifer Nolan."

"You would have," he said, setting his supper on the hood of her cruiser.

"I would have tried, at least. That's the thing that galls me most about Stokes-he skates over everything and still comes out smelling like a rose. I wouldn't care how big a jerk he was if he did the job."

A.J. shrugged. "Some people do the job, some people live the job."

"I don't live the job," she snapped, not liking the correlation to Fourcade that A.J. couldn't possibly have known. "But I hustle when I'm on it. That should count for something."

"It should."

But they both knew the thing that would count for her would be taking the witness stand on Thursday. Annie looked away and sighed.

"So, are you gonna tell me what that was all about the other night?" he asked. "Someone taking a shot at you? My God, Annie."

"Trying to scare me, that's all," she said, still avoiding his gaze.

"That's all? You could have been killed!"

"It was a scare tactic. I'm not very popular as a witness for the prosecution."

"You think it was Fourcade?" he demanded. "That bastard! I'll get his bail revoked-"

"It wasn't Fourcade."

"How do you know that?"

"It just wasn't," she insisted. "Leave it alone, A.J. You don't know anything about this."

"Because you won't tell me! Christ, somebody tries to shoot you and I have to hear about it from Uncle Sos! You don't even bother to call me back when I try to check up on you-"

"Look," she said, reining back her temper. "Can we have this fight another time? I'm 10-7. Hooker's gonna chew me out if I don't go and get back."

"I don't want to fight," A.J. said wearily. He caught hold of her hand and hung on when she would have backed away. "Just a minute, Annie. Please."

"I'm on duty."

"You're 10-7. Personal time. This is personal."

She drew in a breath to protest and he pressed a finger against her lips. His expression was earnest in the filtered light of the streetlamp.

"I need to say this, Annie. I care about you. I don't want to see you hurt by anyone for any reason. I don't want to see you taking crazy chances. I want to take care of you. I want to protect you. I don't know who this other guy is-"