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“I’m with you. So we have to figure out where he’d go, and how he’d get one.”
“You won’t be doing that tonight. You need sleep.”
“He’s tucked in somewhere.”
“Undoubtedly.” Roarke rose to eject the disc, and the screen rippled back to mirror glass. “And so should we be.”
“I can go straight to Central from here, early. I’ve got a change in my locker.”
“You have one here as well,” he told her, as he steered her toward the bedroom. “I had Summerset send down what we’d both need for the night, and tomorrow. And you needn’t look quite so appalled. Not only does it save time and trouble, but I told him specifically what to send, so he didn’t actually select your wardrobe.”
“I guess that’s something.”
And the big bed with its fluffy duvet and mound of pillows looked a lot better than a cot in the crib at Central. By the time she crawled into it, she was ready to give it up for the night.
Tomorrow? Well, tomorrow Reinhold was going to have her right on his ass.
She curled in as Roarke’s arm came around her. And let it go.
In dreams, she sat with Lori Nuccio on the padded crates in the tiny apartment. Lori’s hair swept down to her shoulders, sleek, a glossy reddish brown. Blue eyes reflected sadness out of her unmarred face.
“I didn’t want to look like how he left me.”
“Yeah, I get that.”
“I thought he just needed motivation, and—you know—inspiration. He was cute, and he could be funny. He wasn’t stupid, and he wasn’t mean. Not at first. He treated me okay, and I wanted to help him. I was the stupid one.”
“I don’t think so. You cared about him. You thought you could help him grow up some.”
“Yeah, I guess. I liked having a steady boyfriend. Having somebody, and he’d had some bad luck. He said he had. A lot of bad luck. People were jealous of him, and screwing with him. But that’s not really the way it was. He had such nice parents, and I thought he’d come around.”
She knuckled a tear away. “But he just got worse instead of better. He wouldn’t work, and he complained all the time, and he never helped clean up the apartment. Then he took the money, my money, and when I got mad, he hit me. I had to kick him out. It was what I had to do.”
“It was. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“But he killed me for it and now I’ll never get married or have kids or go shopping with my friends. And he hurt me, really bad. He cut my hair off, and it was so pretty. Now I look like this.”
Her hair fell away, hank by hank, her eyes swelled, blackened, her lip split.
“I’m sorry for what he did to you. I should’ve stopped him.”
“I just wanted a fresh start. But he wouldn’t let me. I don’t want my parents to see me like this. Can you fix it? Can you fix me?”
“I’ll do what I can. I’m going to find him, Lori. I’m going to make sure he’s held accountable for what he did to you.”
“I’d rather not be dead.”
“Yeah, it’s hard to argue with that.”
“He would,” Lori said solemnly. “He wants a lot of people dead.”
“It’s my job to make sure he doesn’t get what he wants.”
“I hope you do your job, because so far, he’s getting it.”
Hard to argue with that, too, Eve thought, and slid into the more comforting dark.
While Eve talked to the dead in dreams, Reinhold gloated over his latest luck.
