13
Eve woke a little after five, groggy, blurry from dreams, and not surprised to find herself alone in bed. She lay in the dark, wishing for another hour’s sleep, knowing it wouldn’t come – and wondering, not for the first time, how Roarke managed on so little shut-eye.
She shoved herself up, staggered to the AutoChef to clear her brain and boost her flagging system with coffee. And reminded herself she wouldn’t have to visit the morgue that morning.
Coffee and a live witness – two live witnesses – made for a good start to the day.
To give her spirit a boost along with her system and brain, she turned on the bedroom Christmas tree – it would be gone for another year in just a few days, so why not enjoy those pretty, cheerful lights? For more warmth, more light, she started the fire.
She still had moments of amazement, and thought she always would, that she had this place, this home where she could enjoy the warmth and snap of a fire on a cold winter morning.
All because someone extraordinary loved her.
By the time she’d grabbed clothes from the closet, programmed her second cup of coffee of the morning, Roarke strolled in, the cat prancing at his heels.
He was already dressed in a king-of-the-business-world suit – black with faint, needle-thin silver stripes, black shirt, a tie that picked up the stripes.
He looked rested, awake, and gorgeous – and she only felt a small twinge of resentment.
“I’d hoped you’d sleep longer.” He kissed her furrowed brow.
“I know you’re not a droid, but I’d like a walk-through of your power-up system because nobody should look like you do on four hours of sleep.”
“Lifelong habit. If I could be up and out before my father or Meg stirred, I’d avoid the morning boot. And you’re not wearing that.”
She’d been thinking she’d once escaped into sleep when she could to avoid her father’s boot – or worse – and frowned at him. “What?”
“You may find yourself on screen again today, so you may as well dress for it.”
“I can’t be worried about clothes when —”
“I will.” He took the jacket and shirt she’d yet to put on. “The pants are fine – a nice rich caramel, classic, good fit. I’ll deal with this, you deal with breakfast. I’m past ready to eat.”
She’d have argued, but the deal gave her control of breakfast. And it sure as hell wouldn’t be oatmeal.
So in her support tank and rich caramel, classic, good-fitting pants, she went straight for the AutoChef.
She wanted waffles – that’s right – waffles in an ocean of syrup. She added sides of mixed berries because he’d make some comment about a balanced meal. Besides, she liked them.
When she turned with the tray, he had a vest the same brown as the pants, but with thin gold stripes, a crisp white shirt, and a jacket of deep, dark green with brown leather buttons.
Okay, she thought, it would look put together, but not fancy, fussy, or showy. She set the tray down on the table in the sitting area – which instantly perked up Galahad’s ears.
Roarke simply pointed a warning finger that had the cat shooting up a leg to wash as if a morning ablution had been his only intention.
Eve put on the shirt over the tank and the fat diamond pendant Roarke had given her the day he told her he loved her. She buttoned on the vest, then sat to flood her waffles with syrup.
“You could just pour a cup of that, drink it straight.”
“Not the same,” she said over soaked waffles. “What wheel were you dealing this early?”
“The village in Tuscany I told you about. We’re moving forward on that.”
“Huh.” She couldn’t say why it struck her so odd he’d buy an Italian village. He owned an island – where they were due to take their winter break if she ever caught this obsessed killer. He owned the lion’s share of an off-planet resort. And those didn’t even make a dent in what made up his empire.
“I thought we might visit there next summer,” Roarke continued, enjoying his less saturated waffles. “There should be considerable progress on the villa’s rehab by then.”
Eve glanced toward the window where the falling sleet looked bitter and just a bit toothy. She could barely imagine summer, and sunshine and heat.
“Miserable, isn’t it?” But he said it easily – and why not, she thought, since they were eating waffles in the warmth with a fire snapping and a holiday tree sparkling.
What was the killer doing? she wondered. Sleeping still? Did she – it was damn well a woman – have a job that allowed her to sleep until the sun, what there would be of it today, rose?
Did she dream, as Eve had dreamed, of blood? Of eyes blindly staring that still held a brutal accusation?
“I’m going to work here this morning,” she decided. “They can’t drag me on screen if I’m here. I can have Peabody come in – McNab, if Feeney can spare him. We’ll have more matches by now in the lab, and still with the new parameters, it’s a smaller grouping.”
“I’ll send a car for them.”
“What?” Genuinely appalled, she gaped at him. “Why? The subway —”
“Eve.” He gestured toward the window, the ugly, frigid sleet.
“Cops are supposed to freeze their asses off,” she told him. “You spoil them.”
“And why not?” he countered. “They’ll get here faster, and drier.” He rubbed a hand on her thigh. “What is it – under it all?”
“Dreams,” she admitted. “Just ugly dreams. Ledo playing pool with a broken cue, with the other half stuck in his chest. Reminding me I broke the cue in the first place. Reminding me he helped me on the dead sleeper – Snooks, the sleeper went by Snooks. Not a lot of help, but he did give me a little. And Bastwick, pounding at me on the witness stand again.”
Eve shook her head, went back to coffee.
“And the killer. She looked like me – sort of. A reflection, I guess, smudged. I guess that came from Hastings talking about her eyes being something like mine. And I get the shrink-wrap of that,” she added. “We’re sitting there, drinking wine. Or she’s drinking it. There’s a big, bubbly pizza on the table between us. Like we’re sharing a friendly moment, you know? And she’s making her case. Just how many murderers, rapists, pedophiles, spouse beaters would Bastwick have gotten off if she’d lived? How many people would mug or steal or kill to get the scratch to buy what Ledo sold? Couldn’t I see the greater good here? Wasn’t it about that? About protect and serve? About justice? About respect for the law and the people who enforce it?”
She fell silent a moment, but he knew she wasn’t finished. She was working up to the rest.
“I said something like killing, taking a life, wasn’t respecting or enforcing the law. That’s when she leaned over, and it was all blood then. The wine, the pie. Just blood. She’s looking at me, and she says I did the same. I killed my father. She’s smiling when she says it, like we’re just a couple of pals having a friendly chat.”
She needed another moment, just one more. “In the dream, I felt panic. She can’t know that. She shouldn’t know that. I said she didn’t know anything about it, but she just kept smiling, told me she knew everything. Everything about me.”
To soothe, Roarke lifted her hand, kissed it. “She doesn’t know anything about you.”
“It felt like she did. ‘You killed Richard Troy,’ she said to me, ‘because he needed killing.’ That I knew what it was like, same as her, to do what needed doing, and to like it.”
“Bloody bollocks to that.”
“I know it.” She pushed up, had to stand, walk it off. “I was eight, and he was raping me – again. And so crazy drunk he might’ve killed me. I believed he would. That little knife on the floor, then in my hand, then going into him. It’s not the same, not the same as killing someone who poses no threat, not to you or anyone. It’s not even in the same universe.”
She shoved her hands through her hair then made herself sit again. “I know that,” she said, calmly now.
Still, he put an arm around her, drew her closer. “You don’t believe what she said in this dream, but you think she does – or would if she knew.”
“Yeah. She’d see it as something that makes us more alike. She sees us as alike, and this would cement it. She needs to convince me, that’s what I think. She needs to show me how right she is, and how it’s all a kind of partnership. She could pick anybody, right, but she needs to pick people she sees as against me, who’ve hurt or offended me in some way. To her twisted mind. Jesus, if a cop isn’t hurt or offended every other day, she’s not doing the job.”
She poked at the waffles on her plate. Shame to waste them, she thought, but her appetite had dropped out. “She asked if I wanted to pick the next one.”
“She thinks she knows you, that’s true enough in dream and reality. But she couldn’t be more wrong.”
“I don’t know her – that’s the problem. Just pieces. But I will, I’ll know her, and all of it. I’m going to wake up Peabody,” she decided, and got up again to do just that.
Once she’d verbally dragged her partner out of a warm bed, Eve headed straight to the computer lab. She brought up the next batch of results, gave them a quick scan.
A pattern here, she decided – definitely a pattern starting to form. She ordered the results on her own comp, started for her office. She could leave any e-nudging to McNab, if Feeney cleared him for her.
With the door connecting her office to Roarke’s open, she heard him on the ’link, and a sizzly female French accent speaking back to him.
Eve listened for a minute, realized despite the sizzly French it was all geek speak. The same, as far as she was concerned, in any language. Incomprehensible.
She went directly to her desk, began to sort and order the latest results with the ones she’d sorted and ordered late the night before.
She ran probabilities, re-sorted, re-ran.
Considered, then wrote up a summary of her conclusions, sent it all to Whitney, to Mira, and for good measure to Feeney as well.
Then sat back and began to read the correspondence she’d highlighted, beginning with the earliest. August of ’59, she mused. Before the Icove investigation. So that… notoriety hadn’t set it all off – if she was on the right track.
The interest – no, obsession – hadn’t rooted there.