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“How did it go with Whitney?”
“About like I expected. Less than I want.”
“From the heft of those bags, I’d say it’s going to be a busy night.”
“I won’t get data from the prison until morning. Isaac McQueen. He’s—”
“I looked him up while you were with Whitney, so I have the salients. Twenty-six girls. And then there was you. I want to hear it, Eve, from you.”
“I’ll tell you all of it. I guess I need to. But I have to clear my head. I have to settle it down. He could be anywhere.” She stared at the streets, the sidewalks, the buildings, the ever-moving crowds. “Anywhere. I want to be out there, looking, but it’s a waste of time and energy. I have to think, and I can’t think until I get my head straight. I need to work some of this off, sweat a little. Take an hour in the gym.”
“With a sparring droid you can beat up?”
She smiled, a little. “Not quite that much.”
“Take your hour. Then we’ll talk.”
She remained silent until he drove through the gates, down the long curve of the drive to the beautiful house with its towers, its turrets, its unique style.
He’d built this, she thought. This house. This home. Her home now, too—and that was something else that could steal her breath.
“I didn’t have anyone to talk to about it before. I hadn’t started training with Feeney, hadn’t met Mavis. I didn’t think I needed or wanted anyone to talk to about it. I think now, this time, if I didn’t, I might go a little crazy. I don’t know if I could take going back alone.”
“You’re not.” As he had at Central, he took her hand in both of his. “And never again alone.” This time with his eyes on hers, he brought her hand to his lips. “Take your hour. Go on, I’ll get your file bags.”
He knew, she thought, because he’d read about McQueen, that she needed time and understood why. She wasn’t sure what she’d done in her life to earn someone who understood her so well.
She stepped inside.
Then again, nothing came free.
Summerset stood in his stiff, funeral-black suit, his face stern as a headstone—and the fat cat, Galahad, squat at his feet.
“I find I can still be shocked,” he said. “You’re home nearly on time, and unbloodied.”
“Day’s not over. You know I though
t I saw a dead man walking a couple hours ago. Did you have to go downtown for some eye of newt?”
He lifted his eyebrows. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. I prefer doing my shopping uptown.”
“Must’ve been another corpse.” She strode by him, opted to take the elevator down to the gym.
Thinking the lieutenant had looked quite impressive in her uniform, standing on Central’s wide steps, Summerset walked over to open the door for Roarke.
And lifted his eyebrows at the file bags. “I take it any celebratory dinner is on hold.”
“It is, yes. An old adversary come round again. It’s troubling,” Roarke said as he started upstairs with the cat trotting after him.
She ran three miles, hard, selecting an urban setting, so the program simulated the sound of her feet pounding on pavement, the buzz of traffic—street and air.
She set another program for weights and pumped until her muscles wept. When that wasn’t enough, she showered off the sweat in the bathroom attached to the expansive gym.
She’d do a couple dozen fast laps in the pool, she decided, and burn off the last of this ugly frustration and sick fear.
She didn’t bother with a bathing suit, but just grabbed a towel. More than the hour she’d asked for, she noted, but she wasn’t quite there yet.
When she stepped out into the tropical paradise of the pool area, wound through the trees, the flowers, she saw him sitting at a table. He’d changed into a T-shirt and casual pants. He had a bottle of wine, a couple of glasses—and worked with apparent enjoyment on his PPC.
