[first lines]
Just one hour to go. My last day on the job. Doctor's orders, heart condition. Angina he calls it. I'm polishing my badge and getting myself used to the idea of saying goodbye to it. It and the thirty odd years of protecting and serving and...blood and terror, the triumph that represents it. I think about Illiene's slow smile, about the thick fat steaks she picked up from the butcher's today. I think about the one loose end I haven't tied up. A young girl who's out there somewhere, helpless in the hands of a drooling lunatic.