Page 38 of Calculated in Death

She stepped onto the platform, sat on the edge of the huge bed to take off her boots. She kicked them aside.

“Hell with it,” she managed before she crawled on, lay facedown across the bed, and tuned out.

•••

An hour later, Roarke walked in. He’d had a long, rough day of his own, wanted his wife and a large glass of wine, more or less in that order.

The same tableau greeted him.

“The lieutenant’s upstairs,” Summerset began as Galahad—semi-arched now—crept over to sniff at Roarke’s trousers.

“Good.”

“She looked exhausted.”

“Small wonder. What’s this?” He bent to scratch at the cat who continued to sniff.

“Apparently he’s mistrustful you’ve been loyal, as he smelled another cat on the lieutenant.”

“Ah. Well, I haven’t had time for cats today.” As Roarke stripped off his topcoat, Summerset held out a hand for it. “Thanks. Let’s go up then,” he said to the cat. “I’m sure she’ll make it up to you.”

He started up, the cat strolling behind him.

If she’d gone to her office, he’d pour some wine into both of them, Roarke determined. And talk her into a short lie-down. He could use one himself. But he wanted out of the bloody suit first.

And he found her, still facedown across the bed.

“That works.”

He took off the suit, changed into loose pants and a long-sleeved T-shirt. Wine could wait, he decided, and slid onto the bed beside Eve. She stirred a little when he wrapped an arm around her, muttered something that sounded like numbers, then settled again.

The cat took a running leap, bounced on the bed beside Roarke’s hip. With his wife curled to his front, the cat to his back, Roarke, in turn, tuned out.

Dreams took her through the day, in their own strange way, into white landscapes, onto frigid sidewalks, through empty offices where weeping echoed and echoed.

She stood in the Dickenson penthouse, hands on hips.

“It’s not here,” she said to Galahad, who ignored her. “Nobody asked you to come, but I’m telling you it’s not here. Nothing’s here but grief. Here’s clear.”

She stepped out of the door and into the apartment still under construction. “Just a little blood, but they shouldn’t have missed it. Sloppy, sloppy. Leave her on the doorstep? Was that a statement, and if so, for who?”

For Whitestone? But he shouldn’t have found the body. An early morning passerby, maybe, more likely one of the construction crew.

And she couldn’t see a link between her vic and anyone on that crew.

She turned a circle, saw the framed photographs of the victim’s kids, the husband. Happier days.

“Family meant everything.” Daniel Yung sat on the comfortable sofa, his hands neatly folded in his lap. “She’d have done, given, said anything to protect them.”

“Yeah, she’d have thought of them after the snatch, of getting home to them. Of the kids, especially. That’s what mothers do, right?”

She smelled her own, saw Stella sneering from the doorway. “She’d have thought about herself, like everybody. She hated being stuck in this place with a sniveling kid. Just like me. She’s no better than me.”

Eve studied her a moment, the bitter eyes, the sneering mouth, the bloody throat slit by McQueen’s blade. And felt little but mild annoyance.

“Fuck off. I don’t have time for you. Everything’s not about you.”

“You think she thought of a couple brats, or the asshole who stuck them in her?”