6
SHE DIDN'T KNOW WHICH ROOM, SO COULD ONLY race toward the sounds of a child screaming. At a turn in the corridor, Roarke passed her. She kicked in so together they shot through an open door.
The bedroom was washed by soft light. The bed was a four-poster with a mountain of pillows and a lacy white spread. Someone-- Summerset, she imagined--had placed yellow flowers, cheerful and bright, on a table by the window. As she bolted in, Eve nearly tripped over the cat, who was either in retreat or on guard.
In the middle of the sumptuous bed, the little girl sat, her arms lifted and crossed over her face as she shrieked as if someone was whaling on her with a hammer.
Roarke reached Nixie first. Later Eve would think it was because he was used to dealing with a female in the grip of nightmares, while she was simply used to having them.
He plucked Nixie straight up and into his arms, holding her, stroking her, and saying her name even when she struggled and slapped at him.
Eve had yet to speak or decide what best to do, when the elevator on the far wall whizzed open, and Summerset strode out.
“Natural,” he said. “Expected.”
“Mommy.” Exhausted from the fight, Nixie let her head drop on Roarke's shoulder. “I want my mommy.”
“I know, yes, I know. I'm sorry.”
Eve saw him turn his head to brush his lips over Nixie's hair. That, too, seemed natural. Expected.
“They're coming to get me. They're coming to kill me.”
“They're not. It was a dream.” Roarke sat, Nixie curled in his lap. “A very bad dream. But you're safe here, as you can see. With me, and the lieutenant and Summerset.”
He patted the bed, and the cat gathered his porky self and leaped up nimbly. “And here, here's Galahad as well.”
“I saw the blood. Is it on me?”
“No.”
“We'll get a soother in her.” Opening a wall panel, Summerset pressed buttons on a mini AutoChef. “She'll be the better for it. Here now, Nixie, you'll drink this for me, won't you?”
She turned her face into Roarke's shoulder. “I'm afraid in the dark.”
“It's not very dark, and we'll have more lights if you like.” Roarke ordered them up another ten percent. “Is that better, then?”
“I think they're in the closet,” she whispered, and her fingers dug into his shirt. “I think they're hiding in the closet.”
That, Eve thought, was something she could do. She went directly to the closet, opened it, did a complete search while Nixie watched her.
“Nobody can get into this place,” she spoke flatly. “Nobody can get past us. That's the way it is. It's my job to protect you. That's what I'll do.”
“What if they kill you?”
“A lot of people have tried. I don't let them.”
“Because you're a major butt-kicker.”
“You bet your ass. Drink the soother.”
She waited, watched, while Nixie drank, while Summerset took over. He sat on the bed, talking to the child in a quiet voice until her eyes began to droop.
And waiting, watching, Eve felt raw and scraped inside. She knew what it was to be chained in nightmares where something unspeakable came for you. The pain and the blood, the fear and the agony.
Even after it was over, the dregs of it stained the edges of your mind.
Summerset rose, stepped away from the bed. “That should help her. I have her room on monitor, should she wake again. For the moment, sleep is the best thing for her.”
“The best thing is me finding who did this,” Eve stated. “Yeah, her parents will still be dead, but she'll know why, and she'll know the people who did it are in a cage. That happens, it'll be better than a soother.”
She walked out, straight to her own bedroom. Cursing, she sat on the arm of the sofa in the sitting area to drag off her boots. It relieved a little tension to heave them across the room.
Still, she was glaring at them when Roarke came in.
“Will she have them all of her life?” Eve pushed off the sofa. “Will she relive that in her dreams all her life? Can you ever get rid of the images? Can you cut them out of your head like a fucking tumor?”
“I don't know.”
“I didn't want to touch her. What does that say about me? For Christ's sake, Roarke, a little kid, screaming, and I didn't want to touch her, so I hesitated. Just for a minute, but I hesitated, because I knew what was in her head, and knowing it, put him in mine.” She yanked off her weapon harness, tossed it aside. “So I'm standing there, looking at her and seeing my father, and the blood. All over me.”
“I touched her, and you showed her there were no monsters in the closet. We each do what we do, Eve. Why ask yourself for more than you can do?”
“Goddamn it, Roarke.” She whirled around, spun by her own demons. “I can stand over a body and not blink. I can grill witnesses, suspects, and not break stride. I can wade through blood to get where I need to go. But I couldn't cross the room to deal with that kid.” It sat in her belly like lead. “Am I cold? God, am I that cold?”
“Cold? Sweet Jesus, Eve, you're nothing of the kind.” He went to her, laying his hands on her shoulders. Firming his grip when she started to shrug him away. “You feel too much, so much I wonder how you stand it. And if you have to close off certain things at certain times, it's not coldness. It's not a flaw. It's survival.”
“Mira said . . . she said to me not long ago that once--before I met you--she'd figured I had maybe three years left before I burned out. Before I couldn't do the job anymore.”
“Why?”
“Because the job was it. It...” She lifted her hands, dropped them. “It was all I had at the center of it. I didn't--maybe couldn't--let anything else in. And maybe, no matter how much I felt, there was too much cold with it. If things had gone on that way--I think I'd have been more than cold .. . I'd've been brittle by now. I've got to do what I do, Roarke, or I couldn't survive. I've got to have you, or I wouldn't want to survive.”
“It's no different for me.” He pressed his lips to her brow. “Winning was my god, before you. Winning, whatever it took. And no matter how much gain you stuff in your pocket, there are still empty spaces. You filled them for me. Two lost souls. Now we're found.”
“I don't want the wine.” Craving the connection, she locked her arms around him. “Or the pool.” Crushed her mouth to his. “Only you. Only you.”
“You have me.” He swept her up. “Now and always.”
“Fast,” she said, already tugging at the buttons of his shirt as he carried her to bed. “Fast and rough and real.”
He climbed the platform, and didn't lie her down so much as fell with her, pinning her arms as they hit the sea of bed. “Take what I give you, then.”
His mouth covered her breast over her shirt, teeth nipping so that the pricks of heat stabbed through her. Filled all the cold, dark corners.
She reared up, ground herself to him, let herself be overpowered. For a moment, for a shuddering moment, that lusty desperation flooded her, washing away all the doubts, the fears, the smears of the day. Now just her body and his, hard and eager, strong and hot.
When he freed her hands to take more of her, she tangled her fingers in his hair, dragged his head up so that her mouth fixed urgently to his.
There was his taste, those firm, full lips, that quick and clever tongue. The scrape of his teeth, small, erotic bites that stopped just short of pain.
Feel me, taste me. I'm with you.
Her hands were more impatient now, greedier now, as they pulled at his shirt. As he pulled on hers.
Her skin was like a fever and her heart a thundering storm under his hands, his lips. The demons that haunted her, those monsters they both knew forever lurked in closets, were cast out by passion. For now, for as long as they had each other.
The violence of her need whipped at his own, burning like a sparking wire in the blood.
He dragged her up, fixing his teeth into her shoulder, ripping what was left of her shirt away. She wore his diamond, the sparkling teardrop on a chain around her throat. Even in the dark he could see its fire. Just as he could see the gleam of her eyes.
The thought passed through his mind that he would give anything he had--life and soul--to keep her looking at him with everything she was in those strong, brown eyes.
She pulled him back with her, so that they rolled now, a sweaty tangle over the midnight ocean of the bed.
She locked her legs around him, locked those eyes on his. “Now,” she said. “Now. Hard and fast and ... Yes. Oh God.”
He drove into her, felt her clamp around him, a wet, velvet vice, as she came. Felt that long, lean body shudder and shudder as he plunged. Still her hips pistoned, taking him in deeper, driving him brutally on.
“Don't shut your eyes. Don't.” His voice was thick. “Eve.”
She lifted her hands, and though they trembled, they framed his face. “I see you. I see you. Roarke.”
And her eyes were open, on his, when they fell.
In the morning she was relieved it didn't appear on the “normal” list to have breakfast with Nixie. It might've been small, even cowardly, but Eve didn't think she could face the questions, or those steady, seeking eyes, without a couple of quarts of coffee first.
She did what was normal for her instead and took a blistering shower, and a quick spin in the drying tube while Roarke did his usual scan of the stock reports on-screen in the bedroom.
With the first cup of coffee down, she opened her closet and pulled out a pair of pants.
“Have some eggs,” Roarke ordered.
“I'm going to go over some data in my office before the rest of the team get here.”
“Have some eggs first,” he repeated, and made her roll her eyes as she shrugged on a shirt.
She marched over, picked up his plate, and shoveled in two forkfuls of his omelette.
“I didn't mean mine.”
“Be more specific, then,” she said with her mouth full. “Where's the cat?”
“With the girl, I'd wager. Galahad's shrewd enough to know she'll be more likely to share her breakfast with him than we are.” To prove it, Roarke took the plate back. “Get your own eggs.”
“I don't want any more.” But she nipped a piece of his bacon from the plate. “I expect to be in the field most of the day. I might need to relieve Baxter and Trueheart, pull in a couple of uniforms. That a problem for you ?”
“Having a house full of cops? Why would that be a problem for me?”
The dry tone made her smile. “I'm going to see the Dysons. Could be we'll move her by tonight, or tomorrow anyway.”
“The child is welcome as long as need be, so that goes for whoever you need to look out for her. I mean that.”
“I know. You're nicer than me.” She leaned down, kissed him. “I mean that.”
She reached over for her weapon harness, strapped it on. “With the Dysons as legal guardians, I can bypass Child Protection and get them moved into a safe house without any sort of data trail.”
“You're concerned whoever did this to her family will want to clean up the loose end.”
“It's a good bet. So her location will be need-to-know, with no paperwork.”
“You told her you'd arrange for her to see her family. Is that wise?”
Eve picked up the boots she'd thrown in temper the night before. “She'll need to. Survivors of violent crimes need to see the dead. She'll have to wait until it's safe, and until Mira clears it, then she'll have to deal. It's her reality now.”
“You're right, I know. She looked so small in that bed last night. It's the first I've dealt with this, specifically. A child who's lost so much. It wouldn't be the first for you.”
After dragging on the boots, she remained sitting on the arm of the sofa. “Not many firsts left in my line. You've seen this at Dochas,” she said, thinking of the shelter Roarke had built. “And worse than this. That's why you made the place.”
“Not quite so personally. Would you want Louise to help in this?”
Louise Dimatto, crusader and doctor, head of Dochas--she'd be a plus, Eve thought, but she shook her head. “I don't want to pull anyone else in, not at this point anyway. Especially a civilian. I've got to get set up before the rest get here. If you get anything on the security system, let me know.”
“I will.”
She leaned down, brushed his lips with hers. “See you, ace.”
She was revved to work, ready to do what she knew how to do. While Baxter and Trueheart plowed through some drone work, Feeney, his EDD team--along with their civilian expert--pushed on the security angle, she and Peabody would continue the interview process.
It was likely, she thought, that the killers had been hired, and were even now out of the city. Even off planet. But once she found the root, she'd work her way up the stem, then break off those branches.
And that root was buried somewhere in the lives of an ordinary family.
“Ordinary family,” she said when Peabody walked in. “Mother, father, sister, brother. You know about that.”
“And good morning to you, too.” Peabody all but sang it. “It's a lovely fall day. Just a bit brisk, with the trees in your beautiful, personal park just--what is it--burnished with that last stand of color. And you were saying?”
“Jesus, what happy bug jumped up your ass?”
“I started out my day with what you could call a bang.” She showed her teeth. “If you know what I mean.”
“I really don't want to know. Really don't.” Eve pressed the heel of her hand against her left eye as it twitched. “Why do you do that? Why do you insist on making me see you and McNab having sex?”
Peabody only flashed a wider grin. “Gives my day an extra bounce. Anyway, I saw Nixie for a minute downstairs. How'd she do last night?”
“Had a nightmare, took a soother. Would you also like to discuss fashion, or any current events while we're chatting?”
“No happy bug up your ass,” Peabody grumbled. “So,” she said when Eve merely studied her with steely eyes, “you said something about families.”
“Oh, I see we're ready to work now.” Eve gestured to the board where, in addition to the on-scene pictures, she'd pinned photos of the family, alive and smiling for the camera. “Routines, families have routines. I had Nixie take me through the morning before the murder, so I've got a sense of theirs: breakfast together, hassling the kids, father walks them to school on his way to work, and so on.”
“Okay.”
“So, somebody surveilling them would get a good sense of their routine, too. Easy enough to snatch and grab one of them, if one of them is the problem. A little persuasion and you know if you've got a problem. Tells me the whole family was the problem. That's one.”
She stepped back from the board. “Two, they have contact with a number of people during the course of this routine: clients, coworkers, neighbors, merchants, friends, teachers. Where do one or more of them cross with someone who not only wants them dead, but has the means?”
“Okay, from what we know, no one in the family felt threatened or worried. From that we can deduce, no dangerous type came up to one of them and said: 'I'm going to kill you and your whole family for that.' Or words to that effect. From the profile on this family, if they'd been scared, they'd have made a report. They were law abiders. Law abiders generally believe in the system, and that the system will find the way to protect you from harm.”
“Good. So while there may have been an argument or a disagreement, none of the adults in the household took it seriously enough to take those steps. Or it happened long enough ago they no longer felt threatened.”

“Oh. There might have been a previous threat, a previous report,” Peabody responded.
“Start looking.” She turned as Baxter and Trueheart came in.
Within the hour, she had her team on their respective assignments and was driving out of the gates. “Dysons first,” she told Peabody . “I want to handle that one, then we'll do formal interviews with the neighbors.”
“I'm not finding any official complaints filed by any of the Swishers or the domestic. Not in the last two years.”
“Keep going. Somebody who could do this would have a lot of patience.”
The Dysons had a two-level apartment in a security-conscious building on theUpper West Side . Even before Eve swung toward the curb, she spotted a pair of media vans.
“Goddamn leaks,” she muttered, and slammed out, leaving Peabody to flip the on-duty light.
The doorman had called out reserves--a smart move, Eve thought-- and had two burly types helping him hold off the reporters.
She flashed her badge, saw the relief on the doorman's face. Not the usual reaction. “Officer.”
The minute he said it, the hungry horde swung on her. Questions shot out like laser blasts and were ignored.
“A media conference will be scheduled later today, at Central. The liaison will give you the details on that. Meanwhile, you will remove yourselves from this entrance or I'll have the lot of you arrested for creating a public nuisance.”
“Is it true Linnie Dyson was killed by mistake?”
Eve reined in her temper. “In my opinion, the murder of a nine-year-old child is always a mistake. My only statement at this time is that all resources of the NYPSD will be utilized to identify those responsible for the death of that child. This case is open and active and we are pursuing any and all possible leads. The next one who asks me a question,” she continued as they were hurled at her, “will be banned from the official media conference. Moreover, you will be cited for obstruction of justice and tossed in the tank if you don't get the living hell out of my way so I can do my job.”
She strode forward; they scrambled back. As the doorman pulled open the door for her, he muttered, “Nice work.”
He came in behind her, leaving the two wide-shoulders to deal with any loitering press.
“You'll want to see the Dysons,” he began. “They've asked not to be disturbed.”
“I'm sorry. They'll have to be.”
“I understand. I'd appreciate it if you'd let me call up first, let them know you're down here. Give them a couple of minutes to ... Mother of God.” His eyes filled with tears. “That little girl. I saw her every day. She was a sweetheart. I can't believe . . . Sorry.”
Eve waited while he pulled out a cloth, mopped at his face.
“You knew her, and the Swisher girl. Nixie.”
“Nixie Pixie.” He balled the cloth in his hand. “I'd call her that sometimes when she came over to visit. Those kids were like sisters. The reports this morning are saying she's okay. That Nixie, she's alive.”
She judged him to be six feet, and in fighting trim. “What's your name ?”
“Springer. Kirk Springer.”
“I can't give you any information right now, Springer. It's against procedure. You see a lot of people come in and out of here, a lot of people pass on the street. Have you noticed anybody hanging around, maybe a vehicle that was parked in the vicinity that wasn't familiar?”
“No.” He cleared his throat. “Building's got security cameras on the entrance. I can get clearance, get you copies of the discs.”
“I'd appreciate it.”
“Anything I can do. That kid, she was a sweetheart. Excuse me, I'll call upstairs.” He paused. “Officer?”
“Lieutenant.”
“Lieutenant. The Dysons, they're good people. Always got a word for you, you know? Don't forget you on your birthday or Christmas. So anything I can do.”
“Thank you, Springer.” When he walked away to make the call, Eve said, “Run him.”
“Sir, you don't think--”
“No, but run him anyway. Get the names of the other doormen, and the security staff, the building manager, the maintenance staff. Run the works.”
“It's 6-B, Lieutenant.” Springer's eyes were still teary when he came back. “To the left of the elevator. Mrs. Dyson's waiting for you. Again, appreciate you dispersing the hounds out there. These people deserve their privacy.”
“No problem. Springer, you think of anything, give me a heads-up at Central.”
When they stepped into the elevator, Peabody read off from her pocket unit. “He's married, two kids, Upper West Sider. No criminal. Employed here the last nine years.”
“Military or police training?”
“No. But he'd have to have security orientation--personal and building--to rate a gig on a building like this.”
With a nod, Eve stepped off, turned left. The door to 6-B opened before she rang the bell.
Jenny Dyson looked older than she had the day before. Older, pale, with that distant look Eve saw in accident victims struggling between shock and pain.
“Mrs. Dyson, thank you for seeing us.”
“You found him. You found the man who killed my Linnie.”
“No, ma'am. Can we come inside?”
“I thought you'd come to tell us. I thought... Yes, come in.” She stepped back, glanced around her own living space as if she didn't quite recognize it. “My husband, he's asleep. Sedated. He can't... They were so close, you see. Linnie, she's Daddy's girl.” She pressed a hand to her mouth, shook her head.
“Mrs. Dyson, why don't we sit down?” Peabody took her by the arm, led her to a long sofa done in a striking, in-your-face red.
The room was bold, splashy colors, big shapes. A huge painting that looked to Eve to represent some sort of swollen sunset in shades of searing red and gold and vivid orange dominated the wall behind the sofa.
There was a wall screen and a mood screen, both turned off, tables in sheer and glossy white, and a tall triple window, with its red curtains tightly closed.
In the excited cheer of the room, Jenny Dyson seemed only more pale. More a faded outline of a woman than flesh and blood.
“I haven't taken anything. The doctor said I could, probably should, but I haven't.” Her fingers worked as she talked, linking together, pulling apart. “If I did, I wouldn't feel, would I? What I need to feel. We went to see her.”
“Yes, I know.” Eve sat across from her, in a chair of lively purple.
“The doctor said she wouldn't have suffered.”
“No. I understand this is a very difficult time--”
“Do you have children?”
“No.”
“I don't think you can understand, I really don't.” There was a hint of anger in the tone--the how-dare-you-presume-to-understand. Then it fizzled into dull grief again. “She came from me, from us. And she was so beautiful. Sweet and funny. Happy. We raised such a happy child. But we failed. I failed, you see. I didn't protect her. I didn't keep her safe. I'm her mother, and I didn't keep her safe.”
“Mrs. Dyson.” Sensing a meltdown, Eve spoke sharply. Jenny's head snapped up. “You're right, I can't understand, not really, what you feel, what you're going through, what you have to face. But I do know this. Are you listening?”
“Yes.”
“This isn't about what you did or didn't do to protect Linnie. This isn't your failure, not in any sense. This was beyond your control, beyond your husband's, beyond anyone's but the men who did this thing. They're responsible, and no one else. And this I do understand, the way you can't, at least not now. Linnie is ours now, too. We can't protect her now, but we will serve her. We will stand for her. You have to do the same.”
“What can I do?” Her fingers kept moving. Together, apart. Together, apart.
“You were friends with the Swishers.”
“Yes. Good friends. Yes.”
“Did either of them say anything to you about being worried, even uneasy, as regarded their safety.”
“No. Well, sometimes Keelie and I talked about what a madhouse the city can be. All the precautions you have to take to live here. But there was nothing specific.”
“What about their marriage?”
“I'm sorry?”
“You were friends. Would she have told you if she had a relationship outside of the marriage, of if she suspected her husband did?”
“They--they loved each other. Keelie would never.” Jenny touched a hand to her face--temple, cheek, jaw--as if assuring herself she was still there. “No, Keelie wasn't interested in anyone else, and she trusted Grant. They were very steady, family-oriented people. Like us. We were friends because we had a lot in common.”
“They both had clients. Any trouble there?”
“There were irritations, of course. Some difficulties. Some people would come to Keelie looking for miracles, or instant gratification. Or they'd sign up with her when they'd have been better off just going to a body sculptor, because they weren't willing to alter their lifestyle. And Keelie's philosophy was about health and lifestyle. Grant handled a number of custody cases that weren't always pleasant.”
“Any threats?”
“No, nothing serious.” She stared beyond Eve to the red wall of curtains. “A client demanding their money back from Keelie, or filing suit because they didn't get the results they wanted when they were stuffing their faces with soy chips. And Grant would get the sort of outrage or anger lawyers deal with because they're lawyers. But for the most part, their clients were satisfied. Both of them built a solid base because of referrals and word of mouth. People liked them.”
“Were they ever involved in anything or with anyone illegal? This isn't about protecting them,” Eve added.
“They believed in doing the right thing, in setting an example for their children. Grant used to joke about his wild college days, and how he'd once been arrested for possession of some Zoner. How it scared him enough to straighten him out.”
She curled her legs up in a way that told Eve the gesture was habitual, thoughtless. “They didn't have a strong family base, either of them. It was important to them to make one, and to raise their own children on that base. The closest either of them would have come to doing something against the law was jaywalking or cheering too loudly at one of Coyle's games.”
“How did you arrange to have Linnie stay the night in their house?”
Jenny shuddered once. She uncurled her legs, sat very straight with her busy fingers twisted tight in her lap. “I ... I asked Keelie if she'd be able to have Linnie over after school, keep her for the night. A school night. Normally, she didn't allow sleepovers on school nights. But she was happy to do it, pleased that Matt and I were able to get the suite, have the anniversary celebration.”
“How long ago did you arrange it?”
“Oh, six, seven weeks. We're not spur-of-the-moment people. But we didn't tell the girls until the night before, in case something came up. They were so excited. Oh God.” She clutched her belly and began to rock. “Linnie said, she said, it was like a present for her, too.”
“Nixie came here a lot, too.”
“Yes, yes.” She kept rocking. “Play dates, study dates, sleepovers.”
“How would she get here?”
“How?” She blinked. “One of them would bring her, or one of us would pick her up.”
“She and Linnie ever go out by themselves?”
“No.” Her eyes were wet now, and Jenny wiped at them in the same absent way she'd curled her legs up on the cushion. “Linnie would complain sometimes because a lot of her schoolmates were allowed to go to the park by themselves, or to the vids or arcades. But Matt and I felt she was too young to be on her own.”
“The Swishers, with Nixie?”
“The same. We had a lot in common.”
“With Coyle?”
“He was older, and a boy. I know that's sexist, but it's the way it is. They kept a tight rein on him, but he could go out with his friends, on his own, as long as they knew where. And he had to carry a pocket 'link so they could check on him.”
“Did he ever get in any trouble?”
“He was a good kid.” Her lips trembled. “A very good kid. His biggest rebellion, that I know of, was sneaking junk food, and Keelie knew about it anyway. He was sports mad, and if he screwed up, they'd limit his activities. Coyle wouldn't risk not being able to play ball.”
When Eve sat back, Peabody touched Jenny on the arm. “Is there someone we can call for you? Someone you want to be here with you?”
“My mother's coming. I told her not to, but then I called her back. My mother's coming.”
“Mrs. Dyson, we're going to need to talk about arrangements for Nixie.”
“Nixie?”
“You and your husband are her legal guardians.”
“Yes.” She pushed a hand through her hair. “We--they wanted to make sure Nixie and Coyle had ... I can't, I can't think--” She shot off the sofa when her husband came down the curve of the stairs like a ghost.
His body swayed; his face was slack with drugs. He wore only a pair of white boxers. “Jenny?”
“Yes, baby, right here.” She dashed toward the stairs to enfold him.
“I had a dream, a terrible dream. Linnie.”
“Shh. Shh.” She stroked his hair, his back, staring over his shoulder at Eve as he bowed his body to hers. “I can't. I can't. Please, can't you go now? Can you go?”

7
MARRIAGE, TO EVE'S MIND, WAS A KIND OF obstacle course. You had to learn when to jump over, when to belly under, and when to stop your forward motion and change direction.
She had work, and at the moment would have preferred that forward motion. But figured when you dumped a strange kid on a spouse, you should at least give him a heads-up when it looked like the stay might be extended.
She took five minutes personal--as personal as she could manage on a pocket 'link while standing on the sidewalk.
She was surprised he answered himself, and guilty when she caught the flicker of annoyance in his eyes at the interruption.
“Sorry, I can get back to you later.”
“No, I'm between--but just. Is there a problem?”
“Maybe. I don't know. Just a gut thing, and I thought I should let you know the kid might be around a little longer than I expected.”
“I told you she's welcome as long as . . .” He glanced away from the screen, and she saw him raise a hand. “Give me a minute here, Caro.”
“Look, this can wait.”
“Finish it out. Why do you think she won't be with the Dysons in the next day or so?”
“They're in bad shape, and my timing didn't help. Mostly, it's a gut feeling. I'm thinking about contacting the--what is she--the grandmother?--when I find a minute. And there's a stepsister, his side, somewhere. Just a backup. Maybe a temporary deal until the Dysons are ... better equipped or whatever.”
“That's fine, but meanwhile she's all right where she is.” He frowned. “You're thinking it might be considerable time before they're able to take her. Weeks?”
“Maybe. Family member should take the interim. I could bring GPS in, but I don't want to. Not if I can avoid it. Maybe I didn't read the Dysons right, but I figured you should know the kid might be around longer than we thought.”
“We'll deal with it.”
“Okay. Sorry to hold you up.”
“No problem. I'll see you at home.”
But when he clicked off, he continued to frown. He thought of the child in his home, and the dead ones. He had half a dozen people waiting for a meeting, and decided they could wait a few moments. What good was power if you didn't flex its muscles now and again?
He called up Eve's file on the Swishers from her home unit, and scanned the names of the family connections.
They started knocking on doors, working their way east then west from the Swisher home. A lot of doors remained unopened, people in the workforce. But those that did open shed no light.
Saw nothing. Terrible thing. Tragedy. Heard nothing. That poor family. Know nothing.
“What are you seeing, Peabody ?”
“A lot of shock, dismay--the underlying relief it wasn't them. And a good dose of fear.”
“All that. And what are these people telling us about the victims?”
“Nice family, friendly. Well-behaved children.”
“Not our usual run, is it? It's like stepping into another dimension where people bake cookies and pass them out to strangers on the street.”
“I could use a cookie.”
Eve walked up to the next building, listed in her notes as a multifamily. “Then there's the neighborhood. Families, double incomes primarily. People like that are going to be beddy-bye at two in the morning, weekday.”
She took another moment to look up and down the street. Even in the middle of the day, the traffic was pretty light. At two in the morning, she imagined the street was quiet as a grave.
“Maybe you catch a break and somebody's got insomnia and looks out the window at just the right time. Or decided to take a little stroll. But they're going to tell the cops, if they spotted anything. A family gets wiped out on your block, you're scared. You want to feel safe, you tell the cops if you saw anything off.”
She rang the bell. There was a scratching sound from the intercom as someone inside cleared their throat.
“Who are you?”
“NYPSD.” Eve held her badge to the security peep. “Lieutenant Dallas and Detective Peabody .”
“How do I know that for sure?”
“Ma'am, you're looking at my badge.”
“I could have a badge, too, and I'm not the police.”
“Got me there. Can you see the badge number?”
“I'm not blind, am I?”
“As I'm standing out here, that's impossible to verify. But you can verify my ID if you contact Cop Central and give them my badge number.”
“Maybe you stole the badge from the real police. People get murdered in their own beds.”
“Yes, ma'am, that's why we're here. We'd like to speak with you about the Swishers.”
“How do I know you're not the ones who killed them?”
“Excuse me?”
Eve, her face a study in frustration, turned to look at the woman on the sidewalk. She was carrying a market sack and wearing a great deal of gold-streaked red hair, a green skin-suit, and a baggy jacket.
“You're trying to talk to Mrs. Grentz?”
“Trying being the operative. Police.”
“Yeah, got that.” She bounced up the stairs. “Hey, Mrs. Grentz, it's Hildy. I got your bagels.”
“Why didn't you say so?”
There was a lot of clicking and snicking, then the door opened. Eve looked down, considerably. The woman was barely five feet, skinny as a stick, and old as time. On her head was perched an ill-fitting black wig only shades darker than her wrinkled skin.
“I brought the cops, too,” Hildy told her, cheerfully.
“Are you arrested?”
“No, they just want to talk. About what happened with the Swishers.”
“All right then.” She waved a hand like she was batting at flies and began to walk away.
“My landlady,” Hildy told them. “I live below. She's okay, except for being--as my old man would say--crazy as a shithouse rat. You ought to go on in and sit down while she's in the mood. I'm going to stick her bagels away.”
“Thanks.”
The place was jammed with things. Pricey things, Eve noted as she made her way between tables, chairs, lamps, paintings that were tilted and stacked against the walls.
The air had that old-lady smell, what seemed to be a combination of powder, age, and flowers going to dust.
Mrs. Grentz was now perched in a chair, her tiny feet on a tiny hassock and her arms crossed over her nonexistent breasts. “Whole family, murdered in their sleep.”
“You knew the Swishers?”
“Of course I knew the Swishers. Lived here the past eighty-eight years, haven't I? Seen it all, heard it all.”
“What did you see?”
“World going to hell in a handbasket.” She dipped her chin, unfolded one of her bony arms to slap a gnarled hand on the arm of the chair. “Sex and violence, sex and violence. Won't be any pillar of salt this time out. Whole place, and everything in it, is going to burn. Get what you ask for. Reap what you sow.”
“Okay. Can you tell me if you heard or saw anything unusual on the night the Swishers were killed?”
“Got my ears fixed, got my eyes tuned. I see and hear fine.” She leaned forward, the tuned-up eyes avid. “I know who killed those people.”
“Who killed them?”
“The French.”
“How do you know that, Mrs. Grentz?”
“Because they're French.” To emphasize her point, she slapped a hand on her leg. “Got their der-re-airs kicked the last time they made trouble, didn't they? And believe me, they've been planning a payback ever since. If somebody's murdered in their own bed, it was the French who did it. You can take that to the bank.”
Eve wasn't sure the little sound Peabody made was a snicker or a sigh, but she ignored it. “I appreciate the information,” Eve began, and started to rise.
“Did you hear someone speaking French on the night of the murders?”
At Peabody 's question, Eve sent her a pitying look.
“You don't hear them, girl. Quiet as snakes, that's the French for you.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Grentz, you've been very helpful.” Eve got to her feet.
“Can't trust people who eat snails.”
“No, ma'am. We'll let ourselves out.”
Hildy stood just outside the doorway, grinning. “Buggy, but somehow fascinating, right? Mrs. Grentz?” She lifted her voice, moved into the doorway. “I'm going on down.”
“You get my bagels?”
“All put away. See you. Keep walking,” she instructed Eve, “and don't look back. You never know what else is going to pop into her head.”
“You got a few minutes to talk with us, Hildy?”
“Sure.” Still carrying the market bag, Hildy led the way out, down the stairs, and around to her own entrance. “She's actually my great great aunt--through marriage--but she likes to be called Mrs. Grentz. The mister's been dead thirty years. Never made the acquaintance myself.”
Though below street level, the apartment was bright and cheerful with a lot of unframed posters tacked to the walls and a rainbow scatter of rugs on the floor. “I rent from her--well, her son pays the rent. I'm a kind of unofficial caretaker--her and the place. You saw upstairs? That's nothing. She's loaded. Wanna sit?”
“Thanks.”
“Seriously loaded, like millions, so I'm here to make sure the security's always on, and that she doesn't lie around helpless if she trips over some of that furniture and breaks her leg. She's got this alarm deal on.” Hildy pulled a small receiver out of her pocket. “She falls, or if her vitals get wonky, this beeps. I do some of the marketing for her, listen to her crab sometimes. It's a pretty good deal for the digs. And she's okay, mostly, sort of funny.”
“How long have you had the place?”
“Six months, almost seven now. I'm a writer--well, working on that--so this is a good setup for me. You guys want something to drink or anything?”
“No, but thanks. You knew the Swishers?”
“Sort of, the way you do when you see the same people all the time. I knew the parents to nod to, like that. We weren't really on the same wave.”
“Meaning?”
“They were totally linear, you know. Put the con in conservative. Nice. Really nice. If they'd see me out, they'd always ask about Mrs. Grentz, and if I was doing okay. Not everybody bothers with that. I knew the kids a little more.”
She held up a hand, shut her eyes a minute. “I'm trying to put it in its place, to get to 'they're where their destiny took them to,' that place. But Jesus!” Her eyes opened again, swam a moment. “They were just kids. And Coyle? I think he had a little crush on me. It was really sweet.”
“So you saw them around the neighborhood.”
“Sure. Coyle mostly. They didn't let the little girl run around as much. He'd volunteer to run to the market, or walk with me there. Or I'd see him out boarding with some friends, and wave, or go out to talk.”
“Did you ever see him with somebody you didn't recognize from around the neighborhood?”
“Not really. He was a good kid. Old-fashioned, at least from the way I was raised. Really polite, a little shy, at least with me. Way into sports.”
“How about the comings and goings? Writers notice things, don't they?”
“It's important to observe stuff, file it away. You never know.” Hildy twirled a hunk of her colorful hair around her finger. “And I did think of something I didn't remember before, when the other cops came by to ask stuff. It's just--I couldn't keep anything in my head when I heard about it. You know?”
“Sure. What do you remember now?”
“I don't know if it's anything, but I started thinking about it this morning. That night. . .” She shifted, gave Eve a weak smile. “Listen, if I tell you something I did that's not a hundred percent legal, am I going to get in trouble?”
“We're not here to hassle you, Hildy. We're here about five people who were murdered in their beds.”

“Okay.” She drew a long breath. “Okay. Sometimes, if I'm up writing late, or if Mrs. Grentz has been a particular pain--I mean, you got a load right? She's funny, but sometimes she wears.”
“All right.”
“Sometimes, I go up on the roof.” She pointed a finger at the ceiling. “There's a nice little spot up there, and it's a place to hang out, look around, sit and think. Sometimes I go up there to, you know, smoke a little Zoner. I can't do that in here. If Mrs. Grentz was to come down-- and she does sometimes--and smell it--she's got a nose like a bloodhound--she'd wig. So if I'm in the mood for a toke, not like every night or anything . . .”
“We're not Illegals, and we're not concerned if you had a little recreational Zoner.”
“Right. So I was up there. It was late because the book had been chugging. I was just hanging up there, about ready to go down, because the long night plus the Zoner made me sleepy. I just sort of looked around, like you do, and I see these two guys. Nice builds-- that's what I thought, you know. Prime meat. I didn't think anything much of it, even when the cops came by and I heard about the Swishers, but I was thinking back, and I remembered.”
“Did you see what they looked like?”
“Not so much. Except they were white guys, both of them. I could see their hands, and a little bit of their faces, and they were white. I didn't really see faces, couldn't from the angle up there. But I remembered how I thought, 'Look at the beef,' and how they walked, side-by side, almost like they were marching. Not talking or anything, like you do if you're out walking with a pal late at night. Just one, two, three, four, all the way to the corner.”
“Which corner?”
“Um, west, toward Riverside .”
“What were they wearing?”
“Okay, I've thought about this, really hard. Black, top to toe, with-- what do they call those wooly hats you pull down on your head?”
“Watch cap ?”
“Yeah, yeah! Like that. And they each had a bag, long strap, cross body. I like to watch people, especially if they don't know. And they really were built.”
“How old were they?”
“I don't know. Honest. I didn't see their faces. They had those caps pulled down, and hell, I was checking the bods. But the other thing I thought later? I never heard them. I mean, they didn't just not talk, I didn't hear their footsteps. If I hadn't gone over to the rail just as they were passing below, I'd never have known they were down there.”
“Let's go up to the roof, Hildy.” Eve got to her feet. “Take us through it again.”
It's a break,” Peabody said when they were out on the sidewalk again. Eve was staring up at the roof. “Not much of one, but a break.”
“It's details. And details count.” She walked back down to the Swisher house, looked up toward the roof where they'd recently stood with Hildy. “Probably would have seen her, if they'd looked. Seen her standing up there, or the silhouette of her, when they got closer. But they were done, confident. Maybe scanned the street, yet careful to keep out of the brightest beams of the security lights. Walked--marched. No hurry, but disciplined--to the corner of Riverside . Had a ride somewhere, you bet they did. Legally parked, street or lot. Street's better, no paperwork of any kind if you snag a street spot, but you can't count on finding a space, so maybe a lot.”
“Stolen ride?” Peabody suggested.
“Be stupid. Stupid because it leaves a trail. You steal something, the owner gets pissy and reports it. Maybe take a vehicle out of long-term somewhere, put it back. But why? You've got all this equipment, expensive equipment. You've got money or backing. You've got a ride of your own. It won't be anything flashy.” She rocked back and forth on her heels. “Nothing that catches the eye, and the driver obeys all traffic regs.”
She walked west as she visualized it. “Do the job, walk out, walk away. No hurry, no noise. Eyes tracking left and right--that's training. Don't think to look up, though, and that's sloppy. Just a little sloppy, or cocky. Or under it, they were revved from the kill. Pro or not, you've got to get a little revved. Walk straight down, no conversation. Go straight to the ride, no detours. Stow the bags for later cleaning or destruction. Back to HQ.”
“Headquarters?”
“Bet that's how they referred to it. Someplace to be debriefed, or to exchange their war stories, to practice, to clean up. And I'll bet you it's squared away.”
She had their scent. She knew it wasn't a logical term, but it was the right term. She had their scent, and she would track it until she had them.
She stood on the corner of Eighty-first and Riverside , looking north, and south, and further west. How far had they walked? she wondered. How many people had seen them walking away from that death house, fresh blood in their bags?
Just a couple of guys heading home after a quick night's work.
“Tag Baxter,” Eve ordered. “I want some names.”
Her name was Meredith Newman, and she was overworked and underpaid. She'd be happy to tell you so, given the opportunity. Though she liked to think of herself as a contemporary martyr, long suffering and sweating blood for the cause.
Once, in her younger days, she'd visualized herself as a crusader, and had worked and studied with the fervor of the converted. But then a year on the job had become two, and two had become five, and the caseloads, the misery and uselessness of them, took their toll.
In her private fantasies, she'd meet a handsome, sexy man, swimming in money. She'd quit. Never have to drag herself through the endless paperwork, the disheartening home checks. Never have to see another battered woman or child.
But until that fine day, it was business as usual.
Now she was heading toward a routine home check, where she fully expected to find the two kids filthy, the mother stoned or on her way toward oblivion. She'd lost hope that it would ever be any different. She'd lost the will to care. The number of people who eventually turned themselves around and became decent, contributing members of society was about one in fifty, in her estimation.
And she always seemed to pull the other forty-nine.
Her feet hurt because she'd been stupid enough to buy a pair of new shoes, which she couldn't afford. Not on her salary. She was depressed because the man she'd been seeing on and off for five weeks had told her she depressed him, and had broken things off.
She was thirty-three years old, single, no boyfriend, a joke of a social life, and so sick and tired of her job she wanted to kill herself.
She walked with her head down, as was her habit, because she didn't want to see the dirt, the grime, the people.
She hated Alphabet City , hated the men who loitered in doorways and rubbed their crotches when she passed by. She hated the smell of garbage--urban perfume--and the noise. Engines, horns, voices, machinery all pulsing against her ear drums.
Her vacation wasn't scheduled for eight weeks, three days, twelve hours. She didn't know if she could make it. Hell, her next day off was three days away, and she didn't know if she could make that.
She wouldn't.
She didn't pay any attention to the squeal of brakes, just more of the cacophony of the city she'd come to loathe like a wasting disease.
The little shoulder bump was just another annoyance, just more of the innate rudeness that infected everyone who lived in this shit hole.
Then her head spun, and her vision went gray. She felt, as if in a dream, the sensation of being lifted off her feet and thrown. Even when she landed in the back of the van, with the tape slapped over her face and her eyes, it didn't seem real. Her body had barely registered the need to scream when the faint nudge of a pressure syringe had her going under.
By mid afternoon, Eve and Peabody had spoken with three of Keelie Swisher's clients and two of her husband's. They were working geographically and took another of Keelie's next.
Jan Uger was a hefty woman who smoked three herbals during their twenty-minute interview. When she wasn't puffing, she was sucking on one of the brightly colored candy drops in a dish beside her chair.
Her hair was done up in a huge glossy ball, as if someone had slicked it up, around, then sprayed it with silicone. She had long jowls, a trio of chins, sallow skin. And a pisser of an attitude.
“A quack.” She puffed, jabbed with her smoking herbal. “That's what she was. Said she couldn't help me if I didn't keep up the regimen. What am I, in Christing boot camp?”
“You were, at one time,” Eve prompted.
“Did three years, regular Army. Where I met my Stu. He put in fifteen, serving our country. I spent those years being a good Army wife and raising two kids. Was the kids put the weight on me,” she claimed and chose another candy. “I tried diets, but I've got a condition.”
Which was, Eve decided, the inability to stop putting things in her mouth.
“Our insurance doesn't cover body sculpting.” She worked the candy around in her mouth, gave it a couple of good crunches. “Cheapskates. Except on the provision you see a licensed nutritionist for six months, and they sign off for you. So, that's what I did, went to that quack, listened to her bullshit. And what happened?”
She sucked so hard on the candy in her fury, Eve wondered it didn't lodge in her throat and choke her to death.
“I'll tell you what happened. I gained four pounds in two months. Not that Stu minds. More to love, is what he says. But I did the drill, and would she sign off? No, she would not!”
“You had a problem with that.”
“Damn right. She said I didn't qualify. Who was she to say? What skin off her nose is it to sign the damn paper so my insurance will foot the bill? People like that make me sick.”
She lit another cigarette, scowled through smoke that smelled like burning mint.
“You argued with Mrs. Swisher?”
“Told her just what I thought of her and her Christing regimen, and said I was going to sue. Would have, but her husband's a damn lawyer, so what's the point? Everybody knows they stick together like a pile of shit. Sorry they're dead, though,” she added as an afterthought.
“Your husband's retired military now, and employed with . . .” Eve pretended to check her notes.
“He's security at the Sky Mall. Hard to live on retirement, plus my Stu, he likes to get out and do a job. Better insurance there, too. He works there another eighteen months, and I can get the sculpting, on them.”
Keep eating, sister, and it's going to take more than sculpting. It's going to take an airjack to whittle you down. “Meanwhile, you were both very dissatisfied with Mrs. Swisher.”
“Of course we were. She took our hard-earned money and did nothing for it.”
“That's upsetting, and feeling unable to sue successfully, you must have wanted to be recompensed in some other way.”
“Told everybody I knew she was a Christing quack.” Her triple chins wagged with satisfaction. “I got plenty of friends, and so does Stu.”
“If it'd been me, I'd have wanted something more personal, more tangible. Maybe you and your husband went to Mr. or Mrs. Swisher to complain, to demand your money back.”
“No point.”
“Was your husband home last night? Between one and three a.m.?”
“Where else would he be at one o'clock in the morning?” she asked hotly. “What is this?”
“A homicide investigation. Your husband's military records indicate he was an MR”
“Eight years. So what?”
“I wonder, when he complained to his buddies about Mrs. Swisher's treatment of you, they must have gotten heated up--on your account.”
“You'd think, wouldn't you? You'd think. But people don't have much sympathy for a woman with my condition.”
“That's a shame. You don't have any friends, or relatives, who could front you the money for the body work?”
“Shit.” She blew out smoke, reached for another candy. “Who are we going to know with that kind of money? I was an Army brat, and my father died serving his country when I was sixteen. Stu's family's mostly factory workers out in Ohio . You know what sculpting costs?” she demanded. Then she swept her gaze over Eve, curled her lip. “How much did it cost you?”
Eve paused outside the building. “Do you think I should've been insulted?” she wondered. “The 'how much did it cost you' crack?”
“She probably meant it as a kind of compliment. But still, I've got a great-aunt who's half French and I was sort of insulted with Mrs. Grentz's French cracks.” She slid into the vehicle. “This one gets checked off.”
“Yeah. No way she's smart enough, no way they have the resources. Husband's military record's clean, and even the MP stint wouldn't give him the kind of training we're after. And he's too old, too weighty himself according to his ID data.”
“Could just be pulling the strings, but--”
“Right. Hard to believe anyone married to her, living in a place full of smoke and candy, is disciplined and clever enough to outline an operation like this one.”
“Or working as a security drone at the mall, chasing off kids, mostly. Bad-mouthing and complaining, that's what these people do.”
“And they don't kill off an entire family because they're pissed off at somebody. No,” Eve agreed. “She was irritating, and he's likely the same, but they're not masterminds or cold-blooded kid killers.”
“You know what else? I don't think whoever did this, or is behind it, made any noise. I mean, none of this, I'll-sue-your-quack-ass business. I know we have to check those out, but that's not going to be the hit.” Eve kept her attention on the road as she drove. “Why?” “Because he has to think ahead, right? Has to be controlled and organized. Whenever this happened--I mean whatever it was that made him target these people--he had to pull it out. Because he'd have been thinking payback. Someday, somehow. But you don't leave a trail.” Now Eve turned her head. “My pride in you bubbles in my heart. Unless it's that soy dog you talked me into earlier.”
“Gosh, Dallas , a blush rises to my cheeks. Unless that, too, is the soy dog.” She thumped a fist on her chest, gave a small, somehow ladylike belch. “Guess it was the dog.”
“Now that we've established that, let's have the next on the list.” Peabody called up the list, the next name, the location, and the directions from the dash menu. Then leaned forward, stroking the dash and crooning. “Nice vehicle, pretty vehicle. Smart vehicle.” She slid her gaze toward Eve. “And who got the nice, pretty, smart vehicle for us?” “You've already milked that one, Peabody.” “Yeah but-- Aww, and see, look at its little 'link beeping.” Shaking her head, Eve answered the beep. “ Dallas .” “A little tit for tat coming your way,” Nadine said, “so don't forget it. Scanner picked up a snatch-and-grab report. Female on Avenue B, tossed in the back of a van quick as a wink.” “Unless she's dead, she's not my table. Sorry.” “Cold, cruel, true. Thing is, one of the witnesses recognized her, and actually bothered to say so to the uniforms responding. Said she was a social worker named Meredith Newman. I get wind of that and I think, hey, isn't that the name of--”
“The GPS drone on the Swisher case.”
“I'm heading down there, to do some interviews. Thought you'd want to know.”
“We're on our way. Don't talk to anybody on scene, Nadine. I need a shot first. You're going to give me tit,” she added when Nadine's mouth opened. “Don't be stingy with it.”
She broke off, whipped around a corner, and headed south.

8
EVE SPOTTED THE CHANNEL 75 VAN PARKED IN a loading zone on Avenue B. She whipped by it, then double-parked beside the black-and-white already at the curb.
She spotted Nadine as well--it was hard not to when the perfectly streaked hair and the vivid royal blue of the reporter's on-air suit sprang out like an exotic bloom against the faded forest of dingy shirts and smudgy concrete.
She was cozied up with a trio of the daily doorway lurkers but peeled off toward Eve.
“I never said I wouldn't ask questions,” Nadine said immediately. “But I've kept it off record. For now. Your uniform's inside with the woman who claims to have seen the grab and recognized the grabee. Hi, Peabody. How are you feeling?”
“Better and better, thanks.”
Eve sent a hard stare at the van. “Keep the cameras off.”
“Public street,” Nadine began. “Public--”
“Nadine, do you know why I often give you an inside track? Because it's not just the story with you. You actually give more than a passing thought to the people in the story. And you wouldn't, not even for ratings, sacrifice those people to get your pretty face on air.”
Nadine blew out a long breath. “Shit.”
“Keep the cameras off,” Eve repeated and strode toward the lingering lurkers. “What did you see?” she began. “What do you know?”
The skinniest of the lot, a mixed-race stick with a pitted complexion, grinned--illustrating that his dental care was slightly below the standard of his skin care--and rubbed his thumb and forefinger together.
“Detective Peabody .” Eve spoke in mild tones, her eyes cold as a shark's. “In your professional opinion, did this individual, who has possibly witnessed a crime, just solicit a member of the NYPSD for a bribe in exchange for information regarding that crime?”
“That does appear to be the case, Lieutenant.”
“Me and my 'sociates need some jack. You give, you gets.”
“And, Detective, what would be my most usual response to such a solicitation?”
“Your response, Lieutenant, would be to haul said individual, and possibly his associates, into Central, possibly charged with obstruction of justice and impeding a police investigation. You would also determine if subject and/or his associates had sheets. If so, you would then spend considerable time ruining their day and potentially making their lives, for the short-term at least, a stinking hell.”
“That's exactly correct, Detective. Thank you. You catch any of that, asshole?”
He actually looked hurt. “No jack?”
“That is also exactly correct. Now I'll repeat: What did you see, what do you know?”
“You gonna take me in I don't say?”
“Two correct answers in a row. Want to try for three?”
“Well, shit. I seen the big nose shuffling along, coming along looking like she smell something she don't like. Ain't worth two looks, but we just hanging, so I start to give her a blow. Then the van thing, it flies up. Fast! And the two dudes, they pop out the back. Got one on each sida her. Lifts her up, toss her in, slam, bam, gone. We and my 'sociates, we'da taken them on but they was rat fast, man. You gets?”
“Yeah, I get. What did they look like? The men who popped out the back?”
“Like ninjas, man.” He looked at each of his pals for nods of agreement. “Like a coupla kick-face ninja dudes in black threads with the mask thing.”
“How about the van?”
“Black, too.”
“Make, model, plate?”
“Hell, what I know? I don't drive no van. Big and black, and moved slick as goose shit. Musta been a dude in the front, but I didn't see nothing. Wasn't lookin'. And the big nose? She don't even squeak. Got her grabbed and stashed so fast, she don't even squeak. We chill now?”
“Yeah, we're chill now. Name?”
“Man.” He shuffled his feet. “Ramon. Ramon Pasquell. I got legitimate parole, man. I be looking for a job now, but I'm standing here jawing you.”
“Right. Ramon, if you or your associates remember anything else, you can contact me at Central.” She handed him a card and a twenty.
“Hey!” No amount of joy lighting his face could make it any less ugly. “You fridge for a big nose.”
“Sweet talker,” she said and walked into the building.
“You don't have a big nose,” Peabody pointed out. “In fact, it could be called narrow and elegant.”
“Big nose--nosey--cops, GPS, probation officers, and so on. We're all big noses to mopes like Ramon.”
“Ah, I gets. Report has the witness on the third floor. Cable, Minnie.”
It only took one glance at the grimy, dented door of the single skinny elevator to have Eve taking the grimy stairs instead. She had a moment to wonder why the stench of urine and puke always seemed to permeate the walls in such places when a uniform stepped out of a door on the third floor.
She noted he made them as cops even before he eyed the badge she'd hooked in her belt. “Lieutenant, you're quick. I just called for detectives.”
“Belay that, Officer. This incident may be related to one of our cases. She going to give me anything worthwhile?”
“Saw the whole thing. She's excitable, but she saw the grab, recognized the victim. Meredith Newman. Child Protection. I contacted GPS, and it checks. Newman was due here for a home check.”
“Okay. Rescind the request for a detective. I'll contact Central after I've talked to the wit. I'd like you to wait downstairs. I've got your unit boxed in anyway. I'll want your report when I'm done up here.”
“Yes, sir.”
As he went down, Eve glanced at Peabody , noted the beads of sweat on her partner's face. Should've risked the elevator, she thought. “You holding, Peabody ?”
“Yeah, I'm fine.” She dug out a tissue, wiped her face. “Still get a little winded, but the exercise is good for me. I'm good.”
“You're otherwise, I want to know. Don't pussy around.” Eve stepped up to the door, knocked. She could already hear the shouts, the crying, the voices. A trio of voices, if she wasn't mistaken. And two of them kids.
It seemed to be her week for kids.
“Police, Ms. Cable.”
“I just talked to the police.” A woman, looking harassed--and who wouldn't with one kid on the hip and the other pulling at your leg?-- opened the door. Her hair was a short, spiky blonde, her build going toward bottom heavy. And her eyes had the rabbit pink hue of a funky junkie.
“Lieutenant Dallas, Detective Peabody . We'd like to come in.”
“I told the other guy the works. Jeez, Lo-Lo would ya stop for two seconds. Sorry, the kids're riled up.”
“This Lo-Lo?” Peabody smiled. “Hi, Lo-Lo, why don't you come on over here with me.”
Kids responded to Peabody , Eve noted. And this one, a pint-size with hair as blonde and spiky as her mother's, peeled off her mother's leg, put her hand in Peabody 's, and walked off babbling.
There wasn't far to go. The room was a little L, with a kitchen forming the jag. But there were a few toys scattered around, and the kid arrowed toward the pile to share them with her new pal.
“I saw from the window, there.” Minnie pointed, shifting the smaller child on her hip. This one had eyes as big and unblinking as an owl's, and a crop of smokey brown curls. “I was watching for her, for Ms. Newman. She don't--didn't think I'd clean up, she didn't think I'd kick the funk. But I did. Been off it six months now.”
“Good.” And if she hadn't been on it too much longer than she'd been off, her eyes might one day lose the red rims and pinkish whites.
“They were going to take my kids. I had to clean up for my kids, so I did. Not their fault I got screwed up. I'm off the funk, and I go to meetings. I get spot checked, and I'm clean. I need Ms. Newman to say I can keep my temp professional mother status. I gotta have the money, gotta pay the rent and the food, and--”
“I'll contact GPS and tell them I was here, saw you were clean, and your children cared for. Your place is clean,” she added.
“I made sure. It gets messy, with the kids, but I don't let it get dirty. I get some more money together, I'm going to move us to a better neighborhood. But this is the best I can do now. I don't want to screw up my kids.”
“I can see that. GPS will send another rep out. You won't lose your status due to these circumstances.”
“Okay.” She turned her face into the little one's neck. “Sorry. I know I shouldn't be so into what's going on with me when that lady got herself grabbed like that. But I don't want to lose my kids.”
“Tell me what you saw.”
“I was standing there, at the window. I was nervous, because she didn't like me. That's not right,” she corrected. “She didn't care. Didn't give a dried-up turd.” She winced, looked over at her older girl. “I try not to use bad language in front of the kids, but I forget.”
“Don't worry about it.” Eve stepped to the window. There was a clear view of the street. She could see the black-and-white, and her own vehicle. And the shaking fists of drivers who were fighting the logjam the double-parking caused. “Here?”
“Yeah. I'm standing there, with Bits on my hip, like now. I'm telling her and Lo-Lo they have to be good. My eyes.” She touched a finger just below her left. “You've been on the funk, even when you're off awhile, they get worse when you're nervous or upset, or just tired. Guess I was all. I saw her coming, walking from that way.”
Stepping closer, Minnie pointed. “Had her head down, so I didn't see her face at first. But I knew it was her. I was going to get back--so in case she looked up she wouldn't see me watching--but I saw the van. It just flew up, you know? Real fast. Squealing when it stopped. These two guys jumped out the back, and they were on her so fast. Pow! Grabbed her up, right off her feet. I saw her face then, just for a second. She hardly looked surprised, but it was--” She snapped a finger. “Tossed her through the open doors, jumped in after her, and were gone.
“I called right away. It might've taken me just a minute, because I was so surprised. I mean it was so fast, then it was like it never happened. But it did. I called nine-one-one and I said what I saw. They won't think I had anything to do with it, will they? Because she was coming here, and I'm a junkie?”
“You don't sound like a junkie to me, Minnie.”
A smile lit up in her red-rimmed eyes.
“Cute kids,” Peabody commented on the way down. “Looks like that woman's pushing against the odds. Good chance she'll make it.”
Eve nodded. The junkies she knew--including vague memories of her own mother--cared more about the next fix than any child. Minnie had a shot.
She stepped back onto the street, signalled to Nadine. “Do your interviews. But keep our names out. I don't want whoever did this to know we suspect a connection to the Swisher murders.”
“And you do.”
Eve started to say “off-record,” but decided it would be an insult under the circumstances. “No. I know there is. But we make that known, Newman is dead. Probably is anyway, but that would seal the deal. And it wouldn't hurt to pump up the human interest regarding Minnie Cable--recovering funk addict, working to stay clean and do right by her kids, so on. She stood up, called this in. But make it clear, Nadine, like crystal, that she was unable to give any description of the perpetrators.”
“Was she?”
“No. Couple of guys, dressed in black. Masked, moved fast. She couldn't make height, age, weight, race, nothing. Just make it clear on-air.”
“Got that. Hey!” She strode, high heels clipping, as Eve walked away. “Is that all I get?”
“All there is, at this point. Nadine?” She paused long enough to glance around. “Your heads-up is noted, and appreciated. Officer,” she continued, stepping up to the uniform. “Give me your report.”
Eve sat in the double-wide cube at Child Protection and fought not to squirm. She hated places like this. An atavistic loathing with an unreasonable current of fear rushed through her. She knew it was unreasonable, knew its root was in a monster spinning horror tales to make her believe he was the lesser of evils.
Lies, of course, vicious lies to keep her in control.
How long did it take to shed the fear-skin of childhood?
Did we ever?
The woman sitting at the workstation in the cube didn't look like a monster. They'll toss you in a pit, little girl. Black and deep and full of spiders. She looked like someone's plump and comfortable grandma. At least the way Eve envisioned plump and comfortable grandmas. Her hair was in a neat circle around a round, rosy-cheeked face, and she wore a long, shapeless print dress. She smelled like berries. Raspberries, Eve thought.
But when you looked in her eyes, the cozy granny was nowhere to be seen. They were dark and shrewd, tired and concerned.
“She hasn't checked in, and doesn't answer her 'link.” Renny Townston, Newman's supervisor, frowned at Eve. “All our reps-- male and female--are issued panic alarms. They often visit rough neighborhoods, and rougher subjects. They're given standard defense training and are required to update that training, along with their other job qualifications, annually. Meredith knew how to take care of herself. She's no rookie. In fact. . .”
“In fact,” Eve prompted.
“She's on the edge of the board, in my opinion. A year, maybe two left in her for this job. She does the job, Lieutenant, but she's lost the heart. Most do after a few years. In six months, if it doesn't turn around, all she'll be doing is putting in time. The fact is ...”
“The fact is?”
“She should never have allowed you to override her on the Swisher matter. Never have permitted you to take that child out of her care or supervision. She didn't even demand the location, and barely followed up on the matter the following morning.”
“I pushed pretty hard.”
“And she didn't stand up to it, to you. At the very least, she should have gone with you and the child, reported in. Instead, she went home, and didn't file the report until morning.”
Annoyance, then worry, pursed Townston's lips. “Now, I'm afraid one of her clients grabbed her up. They blame us, you know, same as you cops get blamed, for their own screwups and failings.”
“How about her personal life?”
“I don't know much about it. She isn't a chat-in-the-breakroom sort. I know she was dating someone for a while recently, but that's over. She's a loner, which is part of the problem. Without a life outside, you don't make it to retirement age.”
Though she knew it was a time waster, it was a routine one, so Eve took the data on Newman's case files. She took the names, the addresses. And with Peabody , went next to Newman's apartment.
The living/kitchen area was larger than Minnie Cable's, but lacked the color and life of clutter. It was clean to the point of sterile with its blank, white walls, engaged privacy screens, its straight-lined sofa and single chair.
There was a data unit on a workstation in the bedroom--bed tidily made--and two boxes of discs, clearly labeled.
“Kinda sad, isn't it?” Peabody glanced around. “Thinking about the different places we've been in today. Say, Mrs. Grentz's insane treasure house, the wild space where Hildy lives below. Even Minnie Cable's pitiful little rooms. People lived there, you could see. Stuff happened there. This is like a vid set. Single professional female with no life.”
“Why didn't they take her here, Peabody ? Why risk a street grab when they can slide into a secured family dwelling and kill five people in less time than it takes to get pizza delivered?”
“Um. They'd be in a hurry. They'd want to get her fast, see what she knows.”
“Part of it. Yeah, part of it. Maybe this place looks dead, feels dead, but she was smart enough, careful enough to rent in a building with good security. Still, no real problem for our boys. But they didn't wait until she got home, didn't take her here. They want her awhile. That's what I'd want. Want to make sure they get it all out of her, and that might take some time. Take privacy. And there's more.”
She turned a circle, thinking. “Because they can. They know how to move fast, to do a job like this fast, so any potential witnesses see mostly a blur. Couple of guys in black, big black van. Pow, pow. Might not have figured that anybody'd do more than scratch and spit over it in that neighborhood, too. Nobody reports, it takes more time for anybody to realize Newman's among the missing. Longer yet to make any connection to the Swisher murders.”
Eve looked at the blank walls, the lonely, neatly made bed. “They've got her somewhere, right now. When they're done with her, she'll be as dead as this room.”
Eve pulled out her communicator. When Baxter came on, she snapped: “Private communication. Get to a secure location or go to text only.”
“Just me and Trueheart here, Dallas. Kid's downstairs. We've got her on monitor.”
“The social worker on her case has been grabbed. Unsubs match description of our suspects. I don't want the wit out of your sight.”
“She isn't and won't be. Do you expect they'll come after her?”
“If they can find out where she is, they'll try. I want her inside, at all times. Stay on this until the next time you hear from me.”
She clicked off, called Roarke. “They've got the social worker,” she said when he went to private. “She doesn't know the location, and it's a big leap. But I've alerted Baxter.”
“Understood. I'll pass this on to Summerset,” he added in a tone that told her he was in a meeting. “I can be there myself in thirty minutes.”
“I don't think they can move faster--and Newman just knew I took her, not that I took her home, but watch your back. They put the kid with me, they put you with me. Another grab isn't out of the question.”
“I'll offer you the same advice, and say that in both cases it's unnecessary.”
This time it was Roarke who ended transmission.
“Scoop up her discs, address books, memo books. Contact EDD for a pickup on her equipment. Let's do this by the book.”
“How long do you think she's got?”
Eve looked around the stark, soulless room. “Not long enough.”
When Meredith surfaced, she thought there was an ice pick dead center of her forehead, radiating sharp shards of pain. The headache was so blinding, she assumed at first that was the reason she couldn't see.
Her stomach rolled a bit, as if she'd eaten something past its expiration date, but when she tried to press her hand to it, her arm wouldn't move.
From somewhere, far off, she heard voices. A watery echo of voices.
Then she remembered. She'd been walking on Avenue B, on her way to a home check, and something . . . someone . . .
The fear came fast, spearing through the pain. When she tried to scream, the only sound she could make was a wild, whimpering moan.
She was in the dark, unable to move her arms, her legs, her head. Unable to see or speak, and when something brushed her cheek, her heart punched against her ribs like a fist.
“Subject's conscious. Meredith Newman, you are in a secured location. You will be asked questions. If you answer these questions, you will not be harmed. I'm going to remove the tape from your mouth at this time. Once I do, tell me if you understand.”
Having the tape ripped off in the solid dark brought on a scream that was more from utter terror than pain. She was slapped, open-palm, on one cheek, followed by a quick answering backhand on the other.

“I said tell me if you understand.”
“No. I don't. I don't understand. What's the matter? Who are you? What--” She screamed again, her body straining against the restraints as pain exploded. Like a thousand hot needles jabbed into her bones.
“It will hurt every time you refuse to answer, any time you lie, any time you don't do as you're told.” The voice was quiet, flat. “Do you understand?”
“Yes. Yes. Please, don't hurt me.”
“We'll have no reason to hurt you if you answer our questions. Are you afraid, Meredith?”
“Yes. Yes, I'm afraid.”
“Good. You've told the truth.”
She couldn't see, but she could hear. She heard little beeps and pings, his breathing--steady. No, someone else, too. She could hear, she thought, movement--but not where the breathing was. Two of them. There'd been two of them.
“What do you want? Please tell me what you want.”
There was another jolt, shocking, quicker, that left her gasping. She thought she smelled something burning, like raw meat. And thought, through the shocking pain, she heard a woman laugh.
“You don't ask questions.”
A second voice. A little deeper, a little harsher than the first. Not a woman. Must have imagined. What does it matter?
God, oh God, help me.
Her eyes wheeled, and she saw there was faint light, just a slit of light to her left. Not in the dark. Thank God, not in the dark. Her eyes were taped as her mouth had been.
They didn't want her to see them. Didn't want her to be able to identify them. Thank God, thank God. They weren't going to kill her.
But they would hurt her.
“I won't. I'll answer. I'll answer.”
“Where is Nixie Swisher?”
“Who?”
The pain struck like a fiery ax, slicing her up the center. Her screams burst into the air, and tears of shock spilled down her cheeks. Her bowels went to water.
“Please, please.”
“Please, please.” It was a woman's voice, a sneering mimic of her own. “Jesus, she shit herself. Pussy.”
Meredith screamed again when the icy water struck her. She began to weep now, thick, wet sobs, as she realized she was naked, wet, soiled.
“Where is Nixie Swisher?”
“I don't know who that is.”
And sobbing, she braced for the agony that didn't come. Her breath came in pants now, her eyes tracking back and forth, from the dark, to the sliver of light, to the dark, to the light.
“Your name is Meredith Newman.”
“Yes. Yes. Yes.” Her skin was on fire, her bones were like ice. “God. God.”
“Is Nixie Swisher one of your cases, as an employee of Child Protection Services?”
“I--I--I get so many. There are so many. I can't remember. Please don't hurt me, please, I can't remember.”
“Register blue,” one of them said from behind her.
“Overworked, Meredith?”
“Yes.”
“I understand that. The system sucks you up, sucks you dry. The wheel of it runs over and crushes what's left of you. Revolution comes because of all it crushes. You're tired of the wheel, aren't you?”
“Yes. Yes.”
“But it's not done with you yet. Tell me, Meredith, how many families have you destroyed?”
“I--” Tears spilled into her mouth. She swallowed the salt of them. “I try to help.”
Impossible, unspeakable pain seared into her. Her screams were mindless pleas for mercy.
“You're a cog on that wheel. A cog on the wheel that crushes out the lifeblood. But now it's turning around to crush you, isn't it? Do you want to escape, Meredith?”
She tasted vomit on her tongue, in her throat. “Yes. No more, please, no more.”
“Nixie Swisher. Let me refresh you. A girl, a young girl who wasn't in her bed as she was told to be. Disobedient child. Disobedient children should be punished. Isn't that right?”
She opened her mouth, unsure. “Yes,” she said, praying it was the answer he wanted.
“Do you remember her now? Do you remember the little girl who wasn't in her bed? Grant and Keelie Swisher, deceased. Executed for heinous acts. Their throats were slit, Meredith. Do you remember now?”
His voice had changed, just a little. There was a fervor that hadn't been there before. Part of her brain registered the fact while the rest gibbered in fear. “Yes. Yes, I remember.”
“Where is she?”
“I don't know. I swear I don't know.”
“In the blue,” the other voice reported.
“Jolt.”
She screamed and screamed and screamed as the pain tore into her.
“You reported to the Swisher residence on the night they were executed.”
Her body continued to shudder. Spittle dribbled down her chin.
“Did you speak with Nixie Swisher?”
“Interview, exam. Exam, interview. Standard. No injuries, no molestation. Shocky.”
“What did she see?”
“I can't see.”
“What did Nixie Swisher see?”
“Men. Two men. Knives, throats. Blood. We'll hide now. Hide and be safe.”
“Losing her.”
“Stimulant.”
She wept again, wept because she was back, aware, awake, and the dregs of pain still lived in her. “No more, please. No more.”
“There was a survivor of the Swisher execution. What did she tell you?”
“She said . . .” Meredith told them everything she knew.
“That's very good, Meredith. Very concise. Now where is Nixie Swisher?”
“They didn't tell me. The cop took her. Against procedure, but she had weight.”
“As her caseworker, you must be informed of her location. You must supervise her.”
“Over my head. Under the table. I don't know. Cop took her. Police protection.”
She lost track of the pain now, of the times it ripped through her like burning arrows. Lost track of the times they brought her back from the edge of oblivion, pounded her with questions.
“Very well, Meredith. I'll need the address of every safe house you know. Every hidey-hole the system digs.”
“I can't-- I'll try,” she screamed against the next wave of agony. “I'll try to remember.” She blurted out addresses between sobs and whimpers. “I don't know all of them, I don't know all. Only what they tell me. I'm not in charge.”
“Just a cog in the wheel. Who took Nixie Swisher?”
“The cop. Homicide cop. Dallas . Lieutenant Dallas.”
“Yes, of course. Lieutenant Dallas. That's very good, Meredith.”
“I've told you everything. Everything I know. Are you going to let me go?”
“Yes, we are. Very soon.”
“Water, please. Could I have some water?”
“Did Lieutenant Dallas indicate where she could take Nixie Swisher?”
“No, no. I swear, I swear. Into her custody. Not regs, but she pushed it through. I wanted to get home. It was a bad place to be. I wanted to get out. Supposed to check into the safe house with the subject, but Dallas overrode me. I let her.”
“Have you been in contact with Lieutenant Dallas since that night?”
“No. The bosses took it over. They don't tell me. It's high-profile. It's sensitive. I'm just--”
“A cog on the wheel.”
“I don't know anything. Will you let me go now?”
“Yes. You can go now.”
The knife slashed so fast, so cleanly across her throat, she never felt it.

9
EVE WALKED INTO HER OWN HOME AS IF SHE were walking into an op. “No one comes in, no one goes out,” she snapped to Summerset, “without my clearance. Savvy?”
“Certainly.”
“Where's the kid?”
“In the game room with Officer Trueheart.” Summerset hitched back the cuff of his black jacket to reveal a wrist unit. Not a time piece, Eve noted, but a monitor. On it, she saw Trueheart and Nixie battling it out on one of Roarke's classic pinball machines.
“I took the precaution of pinning a homer on her sweater,” he added. “If she moves from one location to another, it signals.”
Despite herself, Eve was impressed. “Sweet.”
“They will not lay a hand on that child.”
She looked at him. He'd lost a child, a daughter, not that much older, really, than this one. Whatever else she thought of him, she understood he would stand as Nixie's shield.
“No, they won't. Roarke?”
“He's here. In his private office.”
“Right.” The office where he kept his unregistered--and therefore illegal--equipment. However much she trusted Peabody , there were lines. “Head up, will you,” she said to Peabody . “Give Baxter the current. I'm going to update Roarke, then we'll conference. My office.”
As her partner started up the steps, Eve moved out of the foyer and to the elevator. There she paused. “I need them alive,” she said to Summerset. “Best-case scenario.”
“One of them alive would do.”
She turned back. “She will be protected. Extreme measures, including termination, will be employed if necessary. But consider this before you get your juices up. Two men grabbed Meredith Newman off the street--and one to drive, so that makes three. There may be more. I don't get one healthy, that I can sweat, she may never be safe. The more of them I get healthy, the better chance I have to get them all. To get the why. Without the why, she may never be safe. And she'll never know. You don't know the why, you don't always heal.”
Though his face remained unreadable, Summerset nodded. “You're quite right, Lieutenant.”
She stepped into the elevator, ordered Roarke's private office.
He knew when she came through the gates, and that she'd come up before much longer. So he closed the file, went back to evaluating his security.
He didn't think it was appropriate right at the moment to tell her one of the tasks he'd chosen for the unregisters was indepth--and technically illegal--background checks on all of Nixie's family connections.
The grandmother was out. She'd had a few misdemeaner illegals charges, any number of cohabs, and had a part-time licensed companion standing.
Perhaps the moral judgment was ironic as he was currently an official guardian for the child and had done worse. Considerably worse.
But he was making it nonetheless. He wouldn't see a child turned over to a woman of that sort. She deserved better.
He'd found Grant Swisher's biological father. It had taken a bit of time, but the moral judgment there had come swiftly.
The man was rarely employed, had done a short stint for petty theft, and another for jacking vehicles.
The step-sister looked more promising. She was married, a corporate lawyer out of Philadelphia . Childless. No criminal on record, and financially solvent. She'd been married, to another lawyer, for seven years.
The child could have a home with her, temporarily, even permanently should it become necessary. A good home, he thought, with someone who'd known her parents, who felt some connection.
He sat back, tipped back in the chair. It was none of his business. Not a bit of it.
The hell it wasn't. He was responsible for that child now, whether he'd chosen to be or not. Whether he wanted to be or not.
He had stood outside her bedroom, had seen what had nearly been done to her.
He had stood outside her brother's room, had seen what had been done. A young boy's blood drying to rust on the sheets, the walls.
Why was it that seeing it made him see his own? He didn't think of those days, or so rarely it didn't count. He wasn't--wouldn't be-- haunted by nightmares as Eve was. He was done with those days, and what had been.
But he thought of them now, had thought of them too many times since he'd been inside the Swisher home.
He remembered seeing his own blood. Coming to, barely. Obscene pain swimming through him as he stared at his own blood on the filthy ground of the alley after his father had beaten him half to death.
More than half, come to that.
Had he meant to kill him? Why hadn't he ever wondered that before? He'd killed before.
Roarke looked at the photo of his mother, of himself as a baby. Such a young, pretty face she'd had, he thought. Even bruised by the bastard's fists, she'd had a pretty face.
Until Patrick Roarke had smashed it, until he'd murdered her with his own hands and tossed her in the river like sewage. And now her son couldn't remember her. He'd never remember her voice, or her scent. And there was nothing to be done about it.
She'd wanted him, this pretty girl with the bruised face. She'd died because she'd wanted to give her son family.
Those few years later, had Patrick Roarke, God rot him, meant to leave his own son for dead, or had he simply used his fists and feet as usual?
A lesson for you, boy-o. Life's full of hard lessons.
Roarke dragged his hands through his hair, pressed them to his temples. Christ, he could hear the cocksucker's voice, and that would never do. He wanted a drink, and nearly rose to pour himself a whiskey, just to take off the edge.
But that was a weakness--drinking because you wanted to blunt the edge. Hadn't he proved every day, every bloody day of the life he'd been given that he wouldn't be weak?
He hadn't died in that alley, as poor young Coyle had died in his bed. He'd lived, because Summerset had found him, had cared enough to take a broken boy in--a nasty little son of a bitch, as well.
He'd taken him in, and tended him. And given him a home.
In a human world, even one of murder and blood, didn't an innocent girl like Nixie Swisher deserve that much? Deserve more than he'd been given ?
He'd help her get it, for her sake--and for his own. Before his father's voice got too loud in his head.
He didn't get the whiskey. Instead he pushed aside the memories, the questions, and as much of the sickness of heart as he could manage, and waited for his wife to step into the room.
The room was full of light, the wide windows uncovered. She knew no surveillance device could penetrate the privacy screens on them. Unless he'd built them himself, she thought. Then he'd have built better screens.
At the wide black U of the control console, he sat, jacket discarded, sleeves rolled up, the silk of his hair tied back with a cord.
Work mode.
The console always looked a bit futuristic to her, just as the man who piloted it could remind her of a pirate at the helm of a spaceship.
Lights flashed on that glossy black like jewels as he worked the controls, manually, and by voice.
On the wall screens were different areas of his domain, and the various computer responses gave brisk reports.
“Lieutenant.”
“I'm sorry about this. I'm sorry about what I may be bringing here.”
He stopped what he was doing. “Pause operations. You're upset,” he said, as coolly as he'd spoken to the equipment. “So I'll forgive that insulting remark.”
“Roarke--”
“Eve.” He rose, crossed the wide black floor toward her. “Are we a unit, you and I?”
“Doesn't seem to be any way around it.”
“Or through it.” He took her hands and the contact steadied him. “Or under it, over it. Don't apologize to me for doing what you felt was right for that child.”
“I could've taken her to a safe house. I second-guessed myself on that half a dozen times today. If I had, Newman would know some of the locations. If they get them out of her . . . hell, not if, when. There are cops scrambling right now to move people out of what should be secure locations. Just in case.”
Something flickered in his eyes. “A minute.” He moved back, fast, to the console, switched on a 'link. “Dochas,” he snapped into it. “Code Red, immediate and until further notice.”
“Oh Christ.”
“It's handled,” he said, turning from the 'link. “I have built-in procedures for just this sort of thing. It's unlikely they'll believe you would take her there--with so many others. Less likely yet they can find it. But it's handled. Just as this is.”
He stepped back to her, nodded toward the screens. “I have every inch of the wall and gate secured.”
“A teenager once got over using a homemade jammer.”
The fact that he looked momentarily perturbed by the memory lightened her load. “Jamie is no ordinary teenager. Nor was he able to get through the secondaries. And I've upgraded since then. Believe me, Eve, they won't get in.”
“I do believe you.” Still she paced to the window, to look out, to see the walls for herself. “Newman doesn't know I brought the kid here. Went over her on it, and didn't tell her, mostly because she irritated me. Just a little slap. My balls are bigger than your balls kind of thing. Petty.”
“Being petty--and I do love that about you--has added another layer of protection over Nixie.”
“Dumb luck. But why argue with dumb luck? I've had her supervisor picked up, taken into protective. Had all the paperwork buried.” She huffed out a breath. “I've got Mira locked down, too, just in case her involvement leaks. She's not happy with me.”
“Her safety's more important than her happiness.”
“Put surveillance on Peabody 's place. She's mine, so they may go for her.”
“She and McNab can stay here.”
“One big, happy family. No. We deviate from routine too much, they'll know we're waiting for them to make a move.”
“Eve. You and I both know they're unlikely to move on this house tonight, even if they believe the child is here. They're careful, they're organized. They're controlled. They would have to obtain or simulate my system. Believe me when I say that alone would take them weeks. Then they'd have to find the chinks--of which there are none--they'd have to practice. If you haven't run a probability on that, as I have, I'd be very surprised.”
“A little over twelve percent.” She turned to him, framed now by the wide, wide glass. “But we don't take chances.”
“And the probability they'll try for you?” He lifted his eyebrows when she said nothing, when he saw the faint irritation on her face. “Ninety-six.”
“You're right behind me, pal, at ninety-one.”
“Bloody annoying to have you slip by me by five percent. You were working up to asking me--and I use that verb tongue in cheek--to lock myself down in here. Are we going to argue about that so that I have to throw that five percent probability in your face?”
Thoughtfully, she rocked back and forth on her heels. “I had a pretty good argument worked out.”
“Why don't you save it for another time?”
“I can do that.”
The in-house 'link signalled. “This is Roarke,” he said from where he stood, his attention still on Eve.
“As per her instructions, I'm informing the lieutenant that Captain Feeney and Detective McNab are requesting entrance at the gate.”
“You verify ID visually and by voice print?” she asked Summerset.
“Of course.”
“They're cleared to come through. I want to go talk to my team,” she said to Roarke. “Okay if that includes you?”
“I wouldn't have it any other way. Give me a couple of minutes to finish in here. I'll be along.”
She walked to the elevator, stood looking at the door when it opened at her command. “Roarke? The thing is about probabilities, they don't always factor in every element. They can't fully and successfully analyze every human emotion. The computer doesn't factor in that if someone got to you, it would take me down. If they used you, bargained your life, there isn't much I wouldn't do to get you back. So you factor that in, and I figure you've cut ahead of me on the probability scale.”
She entered the elevator quickly, closed the door before he could respond.
Eve let them settle in first, go through the chatter, the greed for food. She even ignored the cooing flirtation between her partner and EDD ace Ian McNab, the recent cohabs.
The fact was, Peabody 's color had been off since they'd hauled up the steps to interview Minnie. The cooing, however unseemly, had her pinked up again.
And while they settled, Eve organized the conference in her head.
“Okay, boys and girls.” She remained standing. She handled such meetings better on her feet. “If everyone's had their afternoon snack, maybe we can get started.”
“Uptown grub.” McNab scooped up the last of leftover apple pie.
His skinny frame was festooned--Eve figured that was the word for it--in a neon orange skin-tank with sizzling blue pants that had some sort of silver clamps running up the outside of each leg. The over shirt was a headache of dots, outdone only by the glowing checks covering his airboots.
His shining blond hair was pulled back from his thin, pretty face. The better to show off the trio of orange and blue coils adorning each ear.
“I'm glad you approve, Detective. Now maybe you can give your report. Unless, of course, you'd like seconds.”
Sarcasm, even delivered in mild tones, could hit like a hammer. He swallowed the last of the pie quickly. “No, sir. Our team has reviewed and completed search-and-scans on all 'links, all d and c's owned or used by any and all of the vies, and the survivor. We found no transmissions on the 'links other than ordinary communications from and to the Swishers and their domestic. While there were numerous transmissions over the last thirty days, they check. Friends, clients, each other, personal and business transmissions. A list of all, with transcription, is now on disc for your file.”
“Thirty days?”
“The Swishers cleared their 'links every thirty. That's common. We're digging in, and will retrieve the deleted transmissions prior to the thirty. As to the data centers, the files are pretty much what you'd expect.”
“What would I expect, Detective?”
He was warming up, she could see, losing the stiffness her reprimand had caused. He slouched more comfortably in his chair and began to gesture as he spoke. “You know, Dallas, games, to-do lists, meal planning, appointments, birthday reminders. Family stuff, school stuff, upcoming vacation data. Got case files from each of the adult's business units, comments, reports, financials. Nothing pops out. If they had trouble, or suspected they might have trouble, they didn't make a record of it. They didn't discuss it with anyone via 'link.”
He glanced toward the murder board, the death photos, and his eyes--a misty green--hardened. “I've been spending a lot of time with that family the last few days. My opinion--from their electronic records and transmissions--they didn't have a clue.”
She nodded, shifted to Feeney. Beside the fashionable McNab, he looked blessedly dull. “Security.”
“Bypassed and shut down. Remote and at site. Diagnostic scan couldn't locate the source, but when we took the system apart we found microscopic particles--fiber-optic traces. They hooked in--portable code breaker, most likely. Had to be prime equipment to read the code, to get through the failsafes without tripping any alarm. Equipment and operator had to be prime to do it in the time frame we're working with. We're looking for at least one suspect who has a superior knowledge of and skill with electronics, and the equipment to match.”
Since Feeney looked to him for confirmation, Roarke nodded. “Their equipment would have had to have been small, possibly palm-sized. From your description, Lieutenant, of the men seen walking away from the location of the murders.”
“They each had a bag, but no,” she confirmed, “nothing large.”
“Your ordinary, even better-than-average, B and E man isn't likely to have access to a palm-sized breaker in the range capable of reading that system, certainly not at that speed. As the system showed no signs of tampering, the men you're looking for probably didn't have the burglary skills to go manual.”
“Meaning they had to rely on equipment, not...” She lifted her hands, wiggled her fingers. And made him smile.
“Exactly. The equipment would also have to be tailored specifically for that system. The time frame means it was tailored prior to their arrival.”
“Confirming they knew the system, knew what they'd find, and had studied it either by duplicating or purchasing the same system, or spending time on site.”
“The only way they could have studied it on site thoroughly enough to have pulled this off means they had considerable time--hours-- both inside the house and outside, with no one questioning them.”
Eve pursed her lips at Roarke. “Hours?”
“It's a solid system, Dallas ,” Feeney commented. “They didn't get through by eyeballing it.”
“Then it's unlikely they ran suns with the Swisher's actual system. Peabody , you've done a search of purchases of that security system?”
“Yes, sir, and it's a whale of a list. I've started on it, dividing it into city, out of city, out of state, out of country, and off planet. I've then eliminated purchases made before the Swishers obtained their system. I've started runs on purchases in city, and have eliminated approximately another six percent.”
“By what process?”
“Well, by separating out single female purchasers and married with family, then checking those to determine if they had any maintenance and repair on the system since the purchase date. Profile indicates the killers are not family men, and the probability run gave me in the nineties that this process was the most efficient. At this time.”
“Have you run those systems purchased that were not installed by the company?”
Peabody opened her mouth, then closed it long enough to clear her throat. “No, sir. I'll do so.”
“Split the list between all members of this team. Probability or not, do not--at this time--eliminate families or single females. Maybe one of them has a girlfriend, or a female accomplice. Maybe he's a licensed installer. Maybe he's just the handy neighbor who says, 'Hey, I'll take care of that for you and save you some dough.' These are home security systems, but there's no law saying a business couldn't purchase one. Let's get on this.”
She leaned back against her desk, remembered the coffee she'd poured before she'd begun. She picked it up, drank it lukewarm. “Baxter. Client lists.”
“Both the Swishers had a good thing going. Successful in their professions. Family law firm was busy, and Swisher had a good win rate. His caseload weighs heavy on protection of children's rights, custody suits, divorce, while his partner takes more of the straight abuse, palimony, cohab dissolutions, and competency stuff. But they both have a mix, and both have a good percentage of pro bono work.”
He cocked his ankle onto his knee, brushed the line of the pants of his well-cut suit smooth. “She was no slouch either. Lots of referrals. Liked to do families or couples, but didn't turn away the individual. She would also work on a sliding scale, ratio of fee to income. Not just fatties,” he added. “Dug into various eating disorders, health conditions. Consulted with her client's health care provider, and made house calls.”
“House calls?”
“She'd visit the client's home and workplace. Do a study on their lifestyle, recommend changes, not just in eating habits, but in exercise, entertainment, stress levels, the works. That kind of treatment didn't come cheap, but like I said, she had a lot of referrals. Satisfied customers. You got your dissatisfied, too, both sides.”
“Do a cross-check. See how many times their clients crossed. Do another, see which cases Swisher's firm worked on where Meredith Newman was listed as GPS rep. It could be interesting data. Trueheart.”
“Sir.” Long and lanky, and almost tenderly young in his uniform, he came to attention.
“You've been spending time with the witness.”
“She's a nice kid, Lieutenant.”
“Any further data from her?”
“Sir, she doesn't talk much about it. She's broken down a couple of times. Not hysterical, just sits down and cries. I'm trying to keep her busy. She seems comfortable with me, and with Summerset, though she asks about you.”
“Asks what?”
“When you're coming back, what you're doing. When you're going to take her to see her parents and her brother. If you've caught the bad guys yet. I don't know much about, well, I guess you'd say child psychology, but I'd say she's holding on to herself until you do. Catch them. To date, she hasn't said anything that would add to her previous statements.”
“All right. Moving on to Meredith Newman. GPS reps in cases like this are kept confidential. However, it's not that complicated to access the data. Anyone with serious interest and reasonable hacking capabilities could slither into the GPS files like a snake through grass. Feeney, I'll want your department to check the d and c's for any evidence of hacking. Maybe we'll get a bounce. The subject was abducted off the sidewalk on Avenue B, daylight grab, with witnesses. The speed and success of the grab indicates the suspects have some experience in daylight abductions. It also indicates there were three. It's unlikely these two would trust their vehicle to auto under the circumstances. We must assume Newman's connection to Nixie Swisher was the motive for the grab. We must assume that the perpetrators had experience in making grabs of this nature, in electronics and security, in stealth assassinations.”
“Military or para,” Feeney said. “Espionage or special forces. Average citizens, they're not.”
“If they were military, it's likely we'll find they washed out--or were promoted to fucking general because of their particular skills. One way or the other, these men have been in the field, and they've gotten wet. They're not rusty, either, so they've kept in the game.”
“Paramilitary seems more probable,” Roarke commented. “There's testing in standard military that would question the personality type or predilection of killing for personal gain or satisfaction--particularly children.”
“Mercenaries kill for personal gain, and are often attached to military ops.”
“True enough.” But he shook his head at Eve. “That's most usually monetary. Where is the monetary gain here?”
“We might not have found it yet, but let's say I agree. And I agree that it takes a certain kind of personality to slit a child's throat while she sleeps. That's terrorist tactics, and fringe at that. I think that's where this arrow's going to point.”
“More cross-checking then,” Baxter put in. “Known terrorists or members of fringe organizations.”
“Look for teams. Two or more who are known to work together, or known to have trained together. Then we need to put one of them, at least, in New York during the last few years.”
“Could be hirelings,” Baxter pointed out. “Brought into New York to do the job.”
“Low odds. Hirelings would've been smoke an hour after the Swisher hit. But they're still in New York , still here to grab up Newman. One or both of them targeted the Swishers, and for a reason. This means, at some point, one or more of them crossed paths with one or more of the Swishers. Security and wet work, and they're in shape. No desk jockeys or data crunchers. These are field operatives. Males, between thirty and sixty to start. White or light-skinned males. Either they or their organization has deep pockets. Look for the money.”
She rubbed the back of her neck, finished off the cold coffee. “They've got a place, in or near the city. Headquarters. They'd need something local, and they'd need something private. The only logical motive for grabbing Newman would be for information on Nixie Swisher. They'd need somewhere they could take her, work it out of her.”

“We'll be cross-checking until the blood runs out of our ears. Not complaining, Lieutenant,” McNab said quickly. “You can't look at that board and complain. Just feels like the time's dripping away.”
“Then you'd better get busy.” She checked her wrist unit. “Baxter, you're all right where we set you up?”
“It's prime.”
“Trueheart, maybe you could spell Summerset with the witness for fifteen. Mira's due here shortly, then she'll take her. Work with Baxter when you're off babysitting duty. Feeney, you and McNab can work here in the computer lab?”
“No problem.”
“I'll join you,” Roarke told them. “But first, Lieutenant, a minute of your time.”
“That's about all I've got to spare. Peabody ?”
“I'll head down with Trueheart, say hi to Nixie.”
Then, to Roarke, she said, “I have to contact the commander, give him a report, so this has to be quick.”
He merely went to the door, closed it behind Peabody .
“What?” Eve's hands went automatically to her pockets. “You pissed about something?”
“No.” Keeping his eyes, deep and blue, on hers, he walked to her. “No,” he repeated, and taking her face in his hand, kissed her. Long, deep, soft.
“Jesus.” It took longer than it should have for her to pull her hands out of her pockets and nudge him back. “I can't play lock the lips with you now.”
“Quiet.” He took her arms, and the look on his face, so strong, so serious, had her going still. “I value my skin--a very great deal. I'll do what it takes to protect it. I'll do more yet, I promise you, to protect it so that you're not distracted from this with worry for me. I love you, Eve. I'll keep safe because I love you.”
“I shouldn't have hung that on you. I--”
“Quiet,” he repeated. “I'm not finished. You'll keep yourself as safe as you can. You're courageous, but not reckless. I know. Just as I know
there are risks you'll take, risks you'll feel duty-bound to take. Don't keep them from me. When you find a way to use yourself as bait on this, I want to know about it.”
He knew her, she thought. Knew her, understood her, accepted and loved anyway. You couldn't ask for more. “I wouldn't do anything like that without telling you.” When his gaze stayed steady, she shrugged. “I'd think about doing it without telling you, but then I'd cave. I'm not doing anything on that angle until I'm dead sure they won't get me. Because if they get me, they've got a better chance of getting her. And because I love you, too: I get sure, decide to try something, I'll tell you first.”
“Good enough, then. I didn't ask before, and I know you're pressed now, but were you able to speak to the Dysons about Nixie?”
“To her. He was out of it. She's not in much better shape. I'm going to give them another couple days. I know it's inconvenient, but--”
“It's not. I just assume that she'd feel steadier if she had those familiar faces, if she were able to have her friend's parents with her.” He considered telling her what he'd dug up regarding Nixie's remaining family, then let it go. She had enough on her plate. And for reasons he couldn't explain, even to himself, he wanted to handle that part of it. “Summerset told me basically what Trueheart told you. She holds up, she breaks down, and holds up again. She's grieving, and there's no one here who can grieve with her, who knew her family.”
“I'll talk to Mira about it. Maybe she can speak to the Dysons. Might be better coming from her than me.”
“Maybe. I'll go join the EDD boys and leave you to your commander. Grab a nutribar at least with the next gallon of coffee you drink.”
“Nag, nag, nag,” she said as he walked out the door. But she got the nutribar out of her desk drawer.

10
AFTER MIRA AND HER SECURITY ESCORT WERE cleared through the gates, Eve met her at the door. Since she had the extra men, she ordered security to do a patrol around the grounds, with electronic sweep.
“You're being very cautious,” Mira commented. “Do you really expect them to try an invasion on this house?”
“Newman doesn't know where I took the kid, so trying a hit here isn't the next logical step.” She swept a glance down the hall. Trueheart had Nixie in the game room, but that didn't mean the kid couldn't come wandering out. “Why don't we step outside for a minute?”
Eve led the way through the parlor and the doors to the side terrace. She had a momentary pause when she saw a little silver droid, a low, shiny box, busily sucking up fallen leaves. “Huh, how about that.” At her voice, it glided off the terrace and slid down one of the paths into the garden. “Wonder what it does with them once it sucks them up.”
“I think it chops them into a kind of mulch, or compost. Dennis talks about getting something like it, then doesn't. I think he secretly enjoys raking the leaves by hand.”
Eve thought of Mira's kind-eyed, absentminded husband. “Why?”
“Mindless work that gets him outdoors. Of course, if we had grounds this extensive to deal with, it'd be a different story. It's lovely out here, isn't it, even so late in the year with so much of the gardens fading away toward winter.”
Eve looked over the gardens, through the ornamental and shade trees, past arbors and fountains to the thick stone walls. “Lotof ways in, lot of ways out, but as secure as it gets.”
“And still your home. That makes it difficult.”
“I made the call. Look, it's cooler out here than I thought. You okay for a minute?”
“I'm fine.” Mira wore a jacket, and Eve was currently in shirtsleeves. “It must be inconvenient, having so many people in your home.”
“Place is starting to smell like Central. Anyway, if they click on the idea Nixie's here, they might see it as a challenge, get revved at the idea. The bigger the mission, the bigger the payoff.”
“But you don't think they know Nixie's here.”
“I think your average GPS rep would spill data out like a gushing pipe under torture. And I wouldn't hold it against her. Best I can speculate, she doesn't know the witness is here, but knows I took her and bypassed regs. They could put it together. I would.”
“Taking a civilian witness into your personal residence isn't usual, or even standard procedure. But yes, they might put it together. And you also assume that under extreme duress, I would also gush like a broken pipe.”
“It's not a reflection on your standards or your integrity.”
“No.” Mira brushed back a wave of hair the breeze blew across her cheek. “And I don't take it as such. I imagine you're right. While I'd like to think I'd suffer torture and painful death to protect another, it's much more likely I'd succumb. So you have me and my home under surveillance and security. Sensible of you, and I apologize for objecting.”
“I had you under security before, and Palmer got to you.”
Mira as psychologist and profiler and Eve as primary had helped put Palmer away. His revenge spree after his prison escape the previous winter had nearly cost Mira her life. Could have cost both of them, Eve remembered, when he'd abducted Mira and caged her in a basement to lure Eve to his sick New Year's Eve celebration.
“He didn't serve you a tea party, either, and you stood up.”
“He just wanted me to suffer and die. In this case ... where is Nixie?”
“I've got Trueheart riding her. I didn't know where you wanted to set up with her.”
“Where do you think she's most comfortable?”
Eve stared, blank. “Ah, I don't know. She did okay in the parlor last time.”
“A stunning room, and certainly comfortable. But maybe a little intimidating for a child used to less opulence. Where does she spend most of her time?”
“I don't know that either, exactly. She hangs with Summerset a lot, but he's all over the damn house. Like termites. She and Trueheart were hanging out in the game room before.”
“Game room?”
“Roarke's got a damn room for everything. Fancy toys, you know, arcade stuff.” She gave a shrug, though she had to admit, privately, she got a charge out of the deal. “A lot of classic game stuff.”
“Child friendly, then. That sounds very good.”
“Okay.”
When Eve didn't turn back to the door, Mira asked, “How do you feel she's coping?”
“Had a nightmare last night. A real screamer. Thought they were coming for her, hiding in the closet, under the bed.”
“Natural enough. I'd be more concerned if she wasn't afraid. If she was repressing.”
“Like I did.”
“You coped in your own way.” And because they'd come quite a distance in the last two years, Mira touched a hand to Eve's arm. “And still do. This child has a firm foundation, which has been broken out from under her. But that foundation will mean she'll most likely have an easier time regaining her footing. With counseling, with care, and a return to normalcy.”
Eve gathered herself. “There's a thing. The situation she's in, the one I was in, they're nothing alike. Not even close. But--”
“A young traumatized child.”
“She had murder done around her. I did murder.”
“Why do you call it murder?” Mira's voice sharpened. “You know very well it was nothing of the kind. You were a child fighting for her life. If one of those men had found Nixie, and through some miracle she'd been able to kill him, save herself, would you call it murder? Lieutenant.”
“No.” Eve closed her eyes, bore down before the image could form. “No. I know I did what I had to, like she did what she had to. I killed, she hid.”
“Eve.” Her tone gentle now, Mira laid a hand on Eve's cheek. “Eve. You had nowhere to hide.”
“No, I had nowhere.” She had to step away from that touch, from that quiet understanding, or dissolve. “It's good she did. Good she was smart enough to do what she did, strong enough to crawl through blood to survive.”
“And so did you, so were you smart enough and strong enough. And terrified enough. You can't help seeing yourself, as you were, when you deal with her.”
“I did see myself. When I found her, huddled in that bathroom, blood all over her. For a minute, I saw myself in that fucking freezing room in Dallas . And I nearly walked away from her. Hell, I nearly ran away from her.”
“But you didn't. And what you felt is normal. What similarities you see--”
“I'm projecting. I know the term.” She felt temper rise up in her, shoved it back. “I'm handling it. I'm telling you because I figure you should know there's a thing. Off and on.”
“And I expect you to tell me if it becomes too much to handle. For your sake as well as hers. At this point, I believe your empathy with her is helpful--for her. She senses it, and it adds to her sense of safety. You're not just an authority figure. You're her savior.”
Eve turned to the door, opened it. “She saved herself.”
After going back inside, Eve had to stand for a moment, orient herself and bring the location of the game room into her head.
“If you need to talk about this further--”
“I'll let you know.” She closed the door on it. “This way. We keep her on monitor. Got a homer on her.”
“No precaution is overdone, in my opinion.”
“On authority figures, I talked with her legal guardians. Linnie Dyson's parents. They're still pretty torn up. I thought if you talked to them it might come easier than having a cop on their doorstep again.”
“I'll do what I can. It would be good for Nixie, certainly, to see them, to talk to them. And it would help them as well.”
Eve paused. She could hear the beeps and bells of machines. They'd left the door to the game room open. “Listen, before you go in. Grabbing up Newman like that. It was ass covering, and a logical step. But it was strutting, too. Daylight, in front of witnesses. Pulling off something that risky, it's going to juice you up. Coolheaded, cold-blooded, organized planners, sure, but you're going to feel the juice.”
“Those who, even routinely, perform in risky professions or situations get the adrenaline kick. It's part of the reason they do what they do.”
“And the more they get out of Newman, the bigger the rush.”
“Yes.”
Eve let out a deep sigh. “She's dead, isn't she? As soon as they determine they've gotten all the information out of her, there's no reason to keep her alive.”
“Unfortunately, I agree. You couldn't have saved her.”
“I could've thought ahead. I could've ordered this protection lockdown sooner on all connected parties. But I didn't.” Restless, she moved her shoulders. “Hindsight doesn't change anything, so I'll think ahead now.”
She gestured toward the room. “They're in there. You can tell by the insanity of noise.”
“You should come in with me. She needs to see you routinely,” Mira continued when Eve instinctively stepped back. “To remember me in connection to you, so that she's comfortable with me. Once she's seen you, you can go.”
“All right. Jeez.”
Nixie was standing on a stool and pushing the buttons for the flippers on a pinball machine. The one, Eve noted, with cops and robbers--Roarke's particular favorite.
Trueheart was cheering her on, and looked about two years older than his charge.
“You got it now, you got it! Blast 'em good, Nix. In pursuit, armed suspects! You rock.”
The tiniest smile tugged at her cheeks, but her eyes were focused, her brow knitted in fierce concentration.
Eve smelled popcorn, and saw a bowl of it on one of the tables. The wall screen was on, volume up to scream, with one of Mavis's videos blaring. Mavis Freestone herself, in little more than a sparkle of paint, cavorted on that screen with what looked to be a number of mostly naked pirates. Black patches weren't just worn over the eye in Mavis's world, Eve observed.
She recognized the song--so to speak. Something about having your heart sunk and your love shipwrecked.
“I'm not sure that video, however entertaining, is appropriate for a girl Nixie's age.”
“Huh?” Eve looked back at Mira. “Oh, well, shit. Am I supposed to turn it off?”
“Never mind.” Mira patted Eve's hand, and waited until Nixie lost the ball.
“I still didn't get high score.”
“Beat the pants off of me,” Trueheart reminded her.
“But I can't beat Roarke. Maybe he cheats.”
“Wouldn't put it past him,” Eve said. “But I've watched him on that thing. You just can't beat him.”
She'd hoped the casual, somewhat cheerful tone would keep Nixie in the game mood. But as soon as the kid stepped down from the stool, she stared at Eve, the question in her gaze clear.
“No.” Eve spoke tersely now. “Not yet. When I get them, you'll be the first to know.”
“Hello, Nixie.” Mira stepped up to the machine. “You may not have gotten high score, but that looks very impressive to me.”
“It's not good enough.”
“When it's the best you can do, it's good enough. But maybe Roarke will play it with you sometime. Maybe he'll show you some of his tricks.”
A spark of interest lit her face. “Do you think?”
“You can ask him and see. Hello, Officer Trueheart.”
“Dr. Mira. Nice to see you.”
“Do you know all the police?” Nixie wanted to know.
“No, not all. But quite a few. I'd like to talk to you again, Nixie, but first I wonder if you could show me how to play that machine. It looks like fun.”
“I guess. If you want.”
“I do. I'll need to turn off the screen first.”
“But it's Mavis. She's the ult.”
“Oh, I think so, too.” Mira smiled at the cool suspicion in Nixie's eyes. “I have quite a few of her discs myself. Did you know Lieutenant Dallas and Mavis are friends? Very good friends.”
10
AFTER MIRA AND HER SECURITY ESCORT WERE cleared through the gates, Eve met her at the door. Since she had the extra men, she ordered security to do a patrol around the grounds, with electronic sweep.
“You're being very cautious,” Mira commented. “Do you really expect them to try an invasion on this house?”
“Newman doesn't know where I took the kid, so trying a hit here isn't the next logical step.” She swept a glance down the hall. Trueheart had Nixie in the game room, but that didn't mean the kid couldn't come wandering out. “Why don't we step outside for a minute?”
Eve led the way through the parlor and the doors to the side terrace. She had a momentary pause when she saw a little silver droid, a low, shiny box, busily sucking up fallen leaves. “Huh, how about that.” At her voice, it glided off the terrace and slid down one of the paths into the garden. “Wonder what it does with them once it sucks them up.”
“I think it chops them into a kind of mulch, or compost. Dennis talks about getting something like it, then doesn't. I think he secretly enjoys raking the leaves by hand.”
Eve thought of Mira's kind-eyed, absentminded husband. “Why?”
“Mindless work that gets him outdoors. Of course, if we had grounds this extensive to deal with, it'd be a different story. It's lovely out here, isn't it, even so late in the year with so much of the gardens fading away toward winter.”
Eve looked over the gardens, through the ornamental and shade trees, past arbors and fountains to the thick stone walls. “Lotof ways in, lot of ways out, but as secure as it gets.”
“And still your home. That makes it difficult.”
“I made the call. Look, it's cooler out here than I thought. You okay for a minute?”
“I'm fine.” Mira wore a jacket, and Eve was currently in shirtsleeves. “It must be inconvenient, having so many people in your home.”
“Place is starting to smell like Central. Anyway, if they click on the idea Nixie's here, they might see it as a challenge, get revved at the idea. The bigger the mission, the bigger the payoff.”
“But you don't think they know Nixie's here.”
“I think your average GPS rep would spill data out like a gushing pipe under torture. And I wouldn't hold it against her. Best I can speculate, she doesn't know the witness is here, but knows I took her and bypassed regs. They could put it together. I would.”
“Taking a civilian witness into your personal residence isn't usual, or even standard procedure. But yes, they might put it together. And you also assume that under extreme duress, I would also gush like a broken pipe.”
“It's not a reflection on your standards or your integrity.”
“No.” Mira brushed back a wave of hair the breeze blew across her cheek. “And I don't take it as such. I imagine you're right. While I'd like to think I'd suffer torture and painful death to protect another, it's much more likely I'd succumb. So you have me and my home under surveillance and security. Sensible of you, and I apologize for objecting.”
“I had you under security before, and Palmer got to you.”
Mira as psychologist and profiler and Eve as primary had helped put Palmer away. His revenge spree after his prison escape the previous winter had nearly cost Mira her life. Could have cost both of them, Eve remembered, when he'd abducted Mira and caged her in a basement to lure Eve to his sick New Year's Eve celebration.
“He didn't serve you a tea party, either, and you stood up.”
“He just wanted me to suffer and die. In this case ... where is Nixie?”
“I've got Trueheart riding her. I didn't know where you wanted to set up with her.”
“Where do you think she's most comfortable?”
Eve stared, blank. “Ah, I don't know. She did okay in the parlor last time.”
“A stunning room, and certainly comfortable. But maybe a little intimidating for a child used to less opulence. Where does she spend most of her time?”
“I don't know that either, exactly. She hangs with Summerset a lot, but he's all over the damn house. Like termites. She and Trueheart were hanging out in the game room before.”
“Game room?”
“Roarke's got a damn room for everything. Fancy toys, you know, arcade stuff.” She gave a shrug, though she had to admit, privately, she got a charge out of the deal. “A lot of classic game stuff.”
“Child friendly, then. That sounds very good.”
“Okay.”
When Eve didn't turn back to the door, Mira asked, “How do you feel she's coping?”
“Had a nightmare last night. A real screamer. Thought they were coming for her, hiding in the closet, under the bed.”
“Natural enough. I'd be more concerned if she wasn't afraid. If she was repressing.”
“Like I did.”
“You coped in your own way.” And because they'd come quite a distance in the last two years, Mira touched a hand to Eve's arm. “And still do. This child has a firm foundation, which has been broken out from under her. But that foundation will mean she'll most likely have an easier time regaining her footing. With counseling, with care, and a return to normalcy.”
Eve gathered herself. “There's a thing. The situation she's in, the one I was in, they're nothing alike. Not even close. But--”
“A young traumatized child.”
“She had murder done around her. I did murder.”
“Why do you call it murder?” Mira's voice sharpened. “You know very well it was nothing of the kind. You were a child fighting for her life. If one of those men had found Nixie, and through some miracle she'd been able to kill him, save herself, would you call it murder? Lieutenant.”
“No.” Eve closed her eyes, bore down before the image could form. “No. I know I did what I had to, like she did what she had to. I killed, she hid.”
“Eve.” Her tone gentle now, Mira laid a hand on Eve's cheek. “Eve. You had nowhere to hide.”
“No, I had nowhere.” She had to step away from that touch, from that quiet understanding, or dissolve. “It's good she did. Good she was smart enough to do what she did, strong enough to crawl through blood to survive.”
“And so did you, so were you smart enough and strong enough. And terrified enough. You can't help seeing yourself, as you were, when you deal with her.”
“I did see myself. When I found her, huddled in that bathroom, blood all over her. For a minute, I saw myself in that fucking freezing room in Dallas . And I nearly walked away from her. Hell, I nearly ran away from her.”
“But you didn't. And what you felt is normal. What similarities you see--”
“I'm projecting. I know the term.” She felt temper rise up in her, shoved it back. “I'm handling it. I'm telling you because I figure you should know there's a thing. Off and on.”
“And I expect you to tell me if it becomes too much to handle. For your sake as well as hers. At this point, I believe your empathy with her is helpful--for her. She senses it, and it adds to her sense of safety. You're not just an authority figure. You're her savior.”
Eve turned to the door, opened it. “She saved herself.”
After going back inside, Eve had to stand for a moment, orient herself and bring the location of the game room into her head.
“If you need to talk about this further--”
“I'll let you know.” She closed the door on it. “This way. We keep her on monitor. Got a homer on her.”
“No precaution is overdone, in my opinion.”
“On authority figures, I talked with her legal guardians. Linnie Dyson's parents. They're still pretty torn up. I thought if you talked to them it might come easier than having a cop on their doorstep again.”
“I'll do what I can. It would be good for Nixie, certainly, to see them, to talk to them. And it would help them as well.”
Eve paused. She could hear the beeps and bells of machines. They'd left the door to the game room open. “Listen, before you go in. Grabbing up Newman like that. It was ass covering, and a logical step. But it was strutting, too. Daylight, in front of witnesses. Pulling off something that risky, it's going to juice you up. Coolheaded, cold-blooded, organized planners, sure, but you're going to feel the juice.”
“Those who, even routinely, perform in risky professions or situations get the adrenaline kick. It's part of the reason they do what they do.”
“And the more they get out of Newman, the bigger the rush.”
“Yes.”
Eve let out a deep sigh. “She's dead, isn't she? As soon as they determine they've gotten all the information out of her, there's no reason to keep her alive.”
“Unfortunately, I agree. You couldn't have saved her.”
“I could've thought ahead. I could've ordered this protection lockdown sooner on all connected parties. But I didn't.” Restless, she moved her shoulders. “Hindsight doesn't change anything, so I'll think ahead now.”
She gestured toward the room. “They're in there. You can tell by the insanity of noise.”
“You should come in with me. She needs to see you routinely,” Mira continued when Eve instinctively stepped back. “To remember me in connection to you, so that she's comfortable with me. Once she's seen you, you can go.”
“All right. Jeez.”
Nixie was standing on a stool and pushing the buttons for the flippers on a pinball machine. The one, Eve noted, with cops and robbers--Roarke's particular favorite.
Trueheart was cheering her on, and looked about two years older than his charge.
“You got it now, you got it! Blast 'em good, Nix. In pursuit, armed suspects! You rock.”
The tiniest smile tugged at her cheeks, but her eyes were focused, her brow knitted in fierce concentration.
Eve smelled popcorn, and saw a bowl of it on one of the tables. The wall screen was on, volume up to scream, with one of Mavis's videos blaring. Mavis Freestone herself, in little more than a sparkle of paint, cavorted on that screen with what looked to be a number of mostly naked pirates. Black patches weren't just worn over the eye in Mavis's world, Eve observed.
She recognized the song--so to speak. Something about having your heart sunk and your love shipwrecked.
“I'm not sure that video, however entertaining, is appropriate for a girl Nixie's age.”
“Huh?” Eve looked back at Mira. “Oh, well, shit. Am I supposed to turn it off?”
“Never mind.” Mira patted Eve's hand, and waited until Nixie lost the ball.
“I still didn't get high score.”
“Beat the pants off of me,” Trueheart reminded her.
“But I can't beat Roarke. Maybe he cheats.”
“Wouldn't put it past him,” Eve said. “But I've watched him on that thing. You just can't beat him.”
She'd hoped the casual, somewhat cheerful tone would keep Nixie in the game mood. But as soon as the kid stepped down from the stool, she stared at Eve, the question in her gaze clear.
“No.” Eve spoke tersely now. “Not yet. When I get them, you'll be the first to know.”
“Hello, Nixie.” Mira stepped up to the machine. “You may not have gotten high score, but that looks very impressive to me.”
“It's not good enough.”
“When it's the best you can do, it's good enough. But maybe Roarke will play it with you sometime. Maybe he'll show you some of his tricks.”
A spark of interest lit her face. “Do you think?”
“You can ask him and see. Hello, Officer Trueheart.”
“Dr. Mira. Nice to see you.”
“Do you know all the police?” Nixie wanted to know.
“No, not all. But quite a few. I'd like to talk to you again, Nixie, but first I wonder if you could show me how to play that machine. It looks like fun.”
“I guess. If you want.”
“I do. I'll need to turn off the screen first.”
“But it's Mavis. She's the ult.”
“Oh, I think so, too.” Mira smiled at the cool suspicion in Nixie's eyes. “I have quite a few of her discs myself. Did you know Lieutenant Dallas and Mavis are friends? Very good friends.”

“Get back!” Then she bit her lip. “Excuse me, I'm not supposed to sass adults.”
“That's all right. You were just surprised. Eve?”
“Huh?” She'd been wondering why seeing a mostly naked Mavis, and company, on-screen was inappropriate for a kid who'd seen murder up close and personal. “Oh, yeah. Yeah, Mavis and I are pals.”
“You talk to her, in person?”
“Well, sure.”
“Does she ever come here, right to the house?”
“All the time.” Eve was treated to that long, unblinking stare again. Shifted her stance. Thought about security and procedure. Felt her bones start to burn under that stare. “Listen, if I can swing it, and she's not busy, I'll see if she can come by sometime. You can meet her and . . . whatever.”
“For real?”
“No, for false. Jesus, kid.”
“You're not supposed to swear in front of me.” Nixie informed her of this, quite primly.
“Then turn around so I can swear behind you. You straight here now?” Eve asked, just a little desperately, of Mira. “I've got work.”
“We're fine.”
“Trueheart, with me.”
“Yes, sir. See you later, Nixie.”
But before she got to the door, Nixie trotted up behind her. “ Dallas . They all call you Dallas ,” she said when Eve looked back. “Except for her. For the doctor.”
“Yeah,so?”
“Are you going away to work?”
“No, I'm going to work here for a while.”
“Okay.” She walked back to Mira. “I'll show you how to play now.”
Awhile” was hours. McNab might've exaggerated about their ears bleeding, but Eve thought her eyes might. She ran search after search, waiting for names to cross. When the sun went down and the light in her office dimmed, she programmed more coffee, and kept going.
“Food.” Roarke walked in. “You've sent your team home for food, to recharge, to rest. Do the same for yourself.”
“There's going to be a match. Has to be.”
“And the computer can continue the runs while you eat. We're going downstairs.”
“Why down--oh.” She scrubbed her hands over her face. “Right. What are we supposed to talk to her about now?”
“I'm sure we'll think of something.”
“You know what? She's a little scary. I think all of that breed is. Kids I mean. It's like they know stuff you've forgotten, but they still hammer you with questions. She rocked up, though, when Mira told her I was friends with Mavis.”
“Ah.” He sat on the corner of the desk. “A Mavis fan. Considerable conversation to be mined there.”
“And she wants you to play pinball with her. She's got a competitive streak, seems like. She's a little bent she can't meet your scores.”
“Really?” His smile bloomed. “I'd enjoy that. I'll take her down for a bit after dinner. Good practice for when we have a brood of our own.”
She didn't pale, but her eyes did go glassy. “Are you trying to wig me?”
“It's fairly irresistible. Come on.” He held out a hand. “Be a good girl and come to dinner.”
Before she could rise, her 'link beeped. “Minute,” she said, and noted the commander's home data on the ID. “It's Whitney.” Without thinking about it she straightened up in the chair, squared her shoulders. “ Dallas .”
“Lieutenant. The safe house on Ninety-second has been hit.”
“Ninety-second.” Not trusting her mental file, she flipped her fingers over the keyboard to bring up the data. “Prestonand Knight.”
“They're both down.”
Now she did pale. “Down, sir?”
“DOS.” His face was grim, his voice was flat. “Security was compromised. Both officers were terminated. Report to the scene immediately.”
“Yes, sir. Commander, the other locations--”
“Additional units have been dispatched. Reports are coming in. I'll meet you on-scene.”
When the screen went blank, she sat just as she was. Sat just as she was when Roarke came around the desk to lay his hand on her shoulder.
“I hand-picked them.Preston and Knight. Because they were good, solid cops. Good instincts. If there was going to be a hit on one of the locations, I wanted solid cops with good instincts covering them.”
“I'm sorry, Eve.”
“Didn't have to move a wit from that location. Didn't have anybody there, but it was one of the addresses Newman should have known, so it had to be covered. She's dead, too, by now. Stone dead. Tally's up to eight.”
She rose then, checked her weapon harness. “Two good cops. I'm going to hunt them down like dogs.”
She didn't argue when he said he was going with her. She wanted him behind the wheel until she was more sure of her control.
As she jogged down the stairs, pulled her jacket on, Nixie came out into the foyer. “You're supposed to come to dinner now.”
“We have to go out.” There was a firestorm raging in Eve's head she'd yet to be able to shut down to cold.
“Out to dinner?”
“No.” Roarke stepped to Nixie, brushed a hand lightly over her hair. “The lieutenant has work. I'm going to help, but we'll be back as soon as we can.”
She looked at him, then focused on Eve. “Is somebody else dead?”
She started to fob it off, even to lie, but decided on truth. “Yes.”
“What if they come while you're gone? What if the bad guys come when you're not here? What--”
“They can't get in.” Roarke said it so simply it could be taken as nothing less than fact. “And look here.” He took a small 'link out of his pocket as he crouched down to her level. “You keep this. If you're afraid, you should tell Summerset or one of the police we have in the house. But if you can't tell them, you push this. Do you see?”
She moved closer, her blonde hair brushing his black. “What does it do?”
“It will signal me. You can push this, and my 'link will beep twice, and I'll know it's you, and you're afraid. But don't use it unless you really have to. All right?”
“Can I push it now, to see if it works?”
He turned his head to smile at her. “A very good idea. Go ahead.”
She pressed her finger on the button he'd shown her, and the 'link still in his pocket beeped twice. “It works.”
“It does, yes. It'll fit right in your pocket. There.” He slipped it in for her, then straightened. “We'll be back as soon as we can.”
Summerset was there, of course, hovering a few feet back in the hall. Roarke sent him their own signal as he put on his coat. “Lieutenant,” he said, turning. “I'm with you.”
When Summerset stepped forward to take Nixie's hand, she waited until the door shut. “Why does he call her 'Lieutenant'? Why doesn't he call her ' Dallas ' like most everybody else?”
“It's a kind of endearment between them.” He gave Nixie's hand a little squeeze. “Why don't we eat in the kitchen tonight?”
It wasn't rage. Eve wasn't sure there was a word for what gripped the throat, the belly, the head, the bowels when you looked down at the slaughter of men you'd sent into battle. Men you'd sent to their death. Going down in the line was a risk they all took. But knowing that didn't loosen the grip, not when she'd been the one to give them their last orders.
The other cops were quiet, a silent wall. The scene had been secured. Now it was up to her.
The safe house was a post--Urban Wars construction. Cheap, never meant to last. But it had stood, a narrow box of two stories, bumped up against a few more narrow boxes that were all dwarfed and outclassed by the sturdiness of the buildings that had survived the wars, and the sleekness of those built since the hurried, harried aftermath.
She knew the city had bought this, and others, on the cheap. Maintained them on a shoestring. But the security was better than decent, with full-panning cams, alarms backed up by alarms.
Still, they'd gotten in. Not only gotten in, but had taken out two seasoned cops.
Knight's weapon was still holstered, butPreston 's was drawn, lying useless at the base of the stairs while he was sprawled and bloody on them.
Knight's body was facedown, a full stride out of the kitchen. A broken plate, spilled coffee, a veggie ham on rye were scattered in front of him.
The miserly entertainment screen was showing an Arena Ball game. The security screen was black as death.
“Took Knight first.” Her voice was slightly hoarse, but she continued to record the scene and her impressions. “Took him coming out of the kitchen. Surprised him. If they'd takenPreston , Knight would've come out with his weapon drawn.Preston heads down, ready, but they take him.”
She crouched, picked up the weapon. “Got a blast off, at least one, before he went down. Officer, start a canvass. I want to know if anyone heard weapons' fire. If they heard shouts. If they saw a fucking cockroach pass this way.”
“Lieutenant--”
She merely turned her head, and the expression on her face had the uniform nodding. “Yes, sir.”
“Cut their throats--their favorite game. But they didn't cut two cops' throats without a fight. Had to disable first. Long-range stunners,” she said, studying the faint singe onPreston 's shirt. “That's what they had. No chances this time. Not just killing little kids. So they come in the front. God damn how did they get through? How did they compromise this system so fast two cops are caught with their pants down ?”
“It's a standard police system,” Roarke said quietly because he heard more than rage in her voice. He heard pain. “A good system, but standard issue for cop houses. If they had the kind of knowledge we believe, they could have set for this, taken it out, got through the door in under two minutes. Very likely considerably under two minutes with the equipment they must have at their disposal.”
“These were good cops,” she reminded him. “Too good to sit still for a breach like this. Knight's in the damn kitchen making a sandwich. There's a security monitor in there. There are security monitors upstairs. Screen goes out, you go straight to Code Red. So it didn't go out. Not at first. Why is Knight upstairs?”
She stepped over the body, over the blood, and went up to the second floor.
There were two bedrooms, one bath. All windows were privacy screened, barred, and wired. She looked at the 'link in the first bedroom, crossed to it and replayed the last incoming.
It was audio only, and it was her voice.
“Dallas, Lieutenant Eve. The suspects are contained. Repeat, the suspects are contained and being transported. Stand down and report to Central.”
“Fucking A.” Eve muttered.
“Lieutenant?” There was puzzlement, but no alarm inPreston 's voice. “You're on the house 'link.”
“I'm aware of that. Did you copy your orders?”
“Yes, sir, but--”
“ Dallas out.”
“Well, shit.”Preston 's voice was perturbed now, and he didn't immediately end the transmission on his end. “Yo, Knight! Dallas collared the bastards. . . . How the hell do I know, she was her usual chatty self. Make me a damn sand--”
There was a blasting sound, a shout, then the sound of running feet.
“Voice simulator,” Roarke said from behind her. “There was a tinny quality to it, and the lack of inflection in your tone. I suspect, if he had another moment or two, he'd have considered that, and checked in with you.”
“One working the simulator, two coming in. Pull one of them up here with the 'link call, keep him occupied just long enough. Good surveillance equipment, maybe body heat sensors. Knew where they were. One up, one down. Took Knight before he could blink, butPreston got a stream off. They've homed in on him, though, so he's down before he can signal there's trouble.”
“If they had sensors, they'd have known there were only two people here. Both adults.”
She tagged the 'link for EDD. “Some of the safe houses have cold rooms, just to screw with that kind of surveillance. Subject under protection can be in the cold room. No point in not checking that out, once you've got the locations.”
She headed out, and down. Whitney came in the front as she reached the bottom of the stairs.
“Commander.”
“Lieutenant.” He nodded at Roarke, then crossed to the first body. He said nothing. Then, continuing to look at his fallen men, spoke in a voice dangerously soft. “They don't yet know the wrath. But they will. Report.”
She went through the steps, reporting, recording, collecting, and repressed the storm inside. She stood over Morris as he conducted his on-scene exam. “Stunned first. Midbody hit on both.”
“Preston would have been four or five steps down. He got off a stream,” Eve added. “Might've caught one of them. There's no sign of a hit on the walls, anywhere in the room. Crime Scene ran over it. No residue. No wasted shots here,” she noted. “Everyone who fired hit something they were aiming at.”
“My guess would be he crumbled more than fell. I'll know more when I get him in, but the bruising, the position of the body indicates he was thrust back by the stream, then folded, slid. His throat slit where he lay.”
“They had to lift Knight's head to cut him. Blasted back, plate and cup flying. Hits the floor and rolls facedown.”
She walked back to the front door. “Came in together, one high, one low. It's low guy who takes Knight, from the angle of the hit. High hitsPreston . Moving fast, moving smooth.”
She simulated, weapon drawn, heading forward. “One takes Knight.” Blood cold, she moved straight to the body, lifted the head by the hair, mimed drawing a knife over the throat. “Left-handed this time. Versatile bastards. Had the stunners in the right, knives in the left.”
Morris said nothing, only watched.
“Second moves straight toPreston , bends down, slices. Combat grip, one quick stroke. Then he heads up, his partner takes the first floor. Place this size, they can confirm it's empty in under ninety seconds.”
“Have you walked it off already?”
“Yeah, I went through. They're in, they're out. Three minutes. The blood on the floor down here, going into the kitchen and into the toilet's going to be from Knight. Upstairs it's going to bePreston 's. Coming off the knives, coming off the gear. The trail of it, the pattern, shows they were moving fast. See, look.”
She strode to the kitchen doorway, swung her weapon right, left. “See the blood there? Pause, sweep the room, move in.”
She looked back up the stairs. “Prestonshouldn't have come down like that, exposed. Two seconds where he acts before he thinks--he's thinking about his partner instead of with cop instinct--and he's dead.”
She lowered her weapon, holstered it. “Fuck.”
“Truer words. I'll take care of them now, Dallas .” He didn't touch her--his hands were smeared with blood--but the look in his eyes was as steady as the clasp of a hand.
“We're going to bury them for this, Morris.”
“Yes. Yes, we are.”
She went outside. Most of the reporters who'd gathered had scattered after Whitney had given them a brief statement. Stories to file, she thought.
But she saw Nadine over with Roarke by her vehicle. Some of the anger, the cold hard tips of it, clawed through. She strode toward them, ready to rake the reporter bloody--and have a few swipes left over for her husband--when Nadine turned.
Her face was streaked with tears.
“I knew them,” she said before Eve could speak. “I knew them.”
“Okay.” The anger retracted, scraping those keen tips over her own gut on the way. “Okay.”
“Knight. . . We used to flirt. Nothing serious, nothing that either of us meant to go anywhere, but we did the dance.” Her voice broke. “Prestonused to show off pictures of his kid. He's got a little boy.”
“I know. You ought to take some time off, Nadine. A couple of days.”
“After you get them.” She swiped her fingers over her cheeks. “I don't know why it's hit me this way. It's not the first time somebody I know . . .”
“Prestonmay have hit one of them. I'm telling you that friend to friend, not cop to reporter. Because you knew them. Because I knew them, and thinking he might've hit one of them helps me.”
“Thanks.”
“I've got to go finish up here, seal the scene, then go in,” Eve said to Roarke. “I don't know when I'll be home.”
“Call, will you, when you do?”
“Sure.” She thought of what he'd said earlier about the risks she had to take. And what it might be like for him to see other cops, bloody and dead.
So despite Nadine, despite the other cops, the techs, the few gawkers who'd yet to be nudged on their way, she stepped to him, stepped into him. Laid her hands on his face, laid her lips on his.
“I can get you a ride in one of the black-and-whites.”
He smiled at her. “There is nothing I'd like less. I'll take care of my own transpo. Nadine, I'll give you a lift.”
“If I could have a kiss like that, I'd be lifted into orbit. But I'll settle for a ride to the station. Dallas , if you need some research on the side, another pair of hands or eyes, mine are yours. No strings on this one.”
“I'll keep it in mind. Later.” She strode back up the sidewalk, and back into the narrow box that smelled of death.