“That’s a pretty fast track, Baxter.”
“He’s quick, unless you’re talking about with women.” He grinned at that. “He’s got good instincts, and he thinks things through. Plus, the kid’s got me for a trainer. How can he lose?”
“I’ll look over the eval, think about it.”
“He’s made for Homicide,” Baxter added as Eve turned away.
She stopped. “Because?”
“He looks at a DB and sees a person. We can forget that, just see the case. You know how it is. But he doesn’t, and not just because he’s still a little green. He’s wired that way. This is his place, that’s what I’m saying, even if you figure he needs more time in uniform.”
“I’ll think it over.”
She got what she needed from her office and joined the end-of-shifters on the exodus.
She set her vehicle on auto so she could let her mind drift.
Baxter and Trueheart, she thought. Some would have seen it as an odd pairing, the slick, often brass detective and the shy, sweet-natured rookie.
She hadn’t, and that was why she’d assigned Trueheart as Baxter’s aide. She’d believed they’d complement each other, and that Baxter’s style would ripen and toughen the rook.
It had, but the partnership had also . . . softened wasn’t the word, she thought. Maybe opened was better. It had opened Baxter. He’d always been a solid cop—smart, smart-mouthed, competitive. And, in her opinion, mostly out for number one.
Trueheart had changed that so that now they were much more partners than trainer and aide.
They understood each other, communicated with and without words. They trusted each other. A cop couldn’t go through the door with a partner unless there was absolute trust.
A man didn’t kill with a partner unless there was absolute trust. Trust, knowledge, understanding, and a common goal.
What was the common goal?
How had they developed the trust and understanding? How and when had they decided to kill?
Friendships, she thought, took all kinds of forms, and formed for all kinds of reasons. But they stuck, didn’t they, out of genuine affection, genuine need, or the solid base of common ground?
Considering, she used the dash ’link to contact Mavis Freestone.
“Dallas! Belle and I were just talking about you!”
Since Belle was about six months old and mostly said “ga!,” Eve figured it had been a short conversation. “Yeah? Listen, I—”
“I was just telling her all the things she could be when she grows up. You know like president or goddess of all she surveys, or a vid star like Mommy, a designer like Daddy. How she could be the total of totality like Roarke or a kick-ass supercop like you.”
“There you go. I was just . . . are you wearing a crown?”
Mavis lifted a hand to the sparkly gold crown perched on a mountain of hair—currently a bold grass green. “We were playing dress-up.”
“Mavis, you’re always playing dress-up.”
Mavis laughed, a bright, happy giggle. “Being a girl is the frostiest. Oh! Oh! Look. You’ve got to see!”
Eve blinked when Mavis swung the ’link screen—in that second or two the world was a swimming blur of color and shape. Then in the middle of it, the chubby blond baby motored across the floor on all fours toward some sort of red animal. A bear, a dog, a species of undetermined origin, Eve wondered. In any case, Belle zeroed in like a blaster stream, grabbed the animal, then plopped down on her butt and chewed on it vigorously.
“Is that mag or what?” Mavis demanded. “Our Bellamia is growing up so fast.”
“Don’t cry. Jesus, Mavis.”
“It just makes me go all fountain. She’s crawling already and see how she knows just what she wants and goes for it? This morning she crawled over and picked out her pink sandals with the stars all by herself.”
“Amazing.” Maybe it was—how would she know? One thing she did know, common ground wasn’t the base of her friendship with Mavis. The grifter and the cop hadn’t had anything in common, not on the surface. Eve supposed what had cemented them was a kind of recognition.
“Where’s Leonardo?”
“Oh, he had a fitting. He’s picking up some yums on the way home.”
“With who, a regular client?”
“Ah, yeah.” Mavis bent, scooped up Belle and the red mammal. “Carrie Grace, the screen queen. You need him?”
“No. But I’m working on a case—”
“Shockamundo! Right, Bella?” Bella giggled, much like her mother, and waved the red thing in the air by its drooled-on ear.
“The thing is somebody’s killing people who provide what we’ll call fancy or exclusive services. Expensive services, and at the top of their line.”
“I don’t—oh. Oh! Like my honey bear?”
“Yeah, like your honey bear, and like you, Mavis. Just do me a favor, and don’t take any solo appointments or meetings until I close this up. Same for your honey bear. No new clients.”
“You got that squared. Our Bellarina needs her mommy and her daddy. I’ve got that gig in London at the end of next week. We were kind of thinking about adding on some hoot time.”
“Hoot time?”
“Time for having a hoot. Fun. Vacation.”
“Why don’t you do that? Go have a hoot. Let me know one way or the other.”
“Hell, I’m packed five minutes from now. Do you really think somebody could try to hurt us?”
“Probably not. But I don’t take chances with you guys.”
“Aw, I love you, too.”
“Why is that? Why do we love each other?”
“Because we are what we are, and we’re both okay with it.”
And that, Eve thought as she drove through the gates, pretty well nailed it.
When she opened the car door, the heat knocked her back on her heels. And when she had to brace a hand on the door because her head spun, she had to admit sleep had to be the first order of business. She steadied herself and walked inside to the blissful, quiet cool.
“Have you been brawling again?” Summerset wondered. “Or is this some kind of fashion statement?”
She remembered the bandage on her arm, and the lack of a jacket to conceal it. “Neither. I lost a bet and had to get your name tattooed on my arm. So I carved it out with a penknife.”
A little lame, she thought as she went upstairs, but the best she could do when her brain wanted so desperately to check out.
Two hours, she told herself. Two hours down to recharge, then she’d go at the whole thing fresh.
In the bedroom she didn’t bother to remove her weapon and harness but simply dropped facedown on the bed. She barely felt the thump on her ass when the cat landed there.
Forty minutes later, Roarke came home.
“The lieutenant’s sporting a bandage on her left forearm,” Summerset reported. “It doesn’t look serious.”
“Ah, well.”
“You need sleep.”
“I do. Block the ’links for the next couple of hours, would you? Unless it’s an emergency or her dispatch.”
“Already done.”
Roarke went up, found her crossways and facedown on the bed, a position that signaled exhaustion. From his perch on Eve’s ass, Galahad blinked.
“I’ll take over now if you’ve something else to do,” Roarke murmured. He peeled off his suit coat, his tie, his shoes. When he pulled Eve’s boots off, she didn’t budge an inch.
Much as he had that morning in her office, he lay down beside her, closed his eyes, and slept.
12
SHE HUNTED. WITH A BAYONET SHEATHED AT her side, a crossbow in her hands, she stalked her prey through richly appointed rooms, glittering light, velvet shadows.
The fragrance was drowning floral, so thick it felt like breathing blossoms. On the ornately carved desk she’d seen in Moriarity’s office, two men—hooded, stripped to the waist—turned a screaming woman on the rack.
“Can’t help you,” Eve told her. “You’re not real, anyway.”
The woman paused mid-scream to smile wearily. “Who is? What is?”
“I haven’t got time for philosophy. They’ve already picked out the next.”
“The next what? The next who? The next what?”
“Do you mind,” one of the hooded men said. “You’re interrupting the program.”