“Yes. Yes, I want them to come home. I want them home.”
“Meanwhile is there someone we can call, a neighbor, a friend, to stay with you?”
“I don’t know. I don’t…”
“Ms. York.” Peabody spoke gently. “You don’t have to be alone now. Let us call a friend to come be with you.”
“Lib. Could you call Lib? She’ll come.”
When they were outside, Roarke took a long breath. “I often wonder how you do what you do, standing over death, looking so unflinchingly into the minds of those who bring it. But I think of all you do, taking what’s been done to those left behind, feeling—as you’d have to—their pain—is more wrenching than all the rest of it.”
He brushed his hand over Eve’s. “You didn’t tell her what happened to her sister. You’re giving her time to get through the first of the pain.”
“I don’t know if I did her any favors. It’s going to break her to pieces. Might’ve been better to do it now when she’s already broken.”
“You did it right,” Peabody said. “She’s got her friend, but she’ll need her family. They’re going to need each other to get through that end of it.”
“Well. We’ll go see what Morris can tell us. Listen.” She turned to Roarke. “I’ll get in touch as soon as I can.”
“I’d like to go with you.”
“It’s already, what, after four in the morning. You don’t want to go to the morgue.”
“A moment,” he murmured to Peabody, and taking Eve’s hand drew her aside. “I’d like to see this through. I’d like you to let me.”
“I can tell you whatever we get from Morris, and you can grab some sleep. But,” she continued before he could speak, “that’s not the same thing. I want you to tell me you don’t feel responsible for this.”
He looked back toward the sister’s apartment, thought of the grief that lived there now. “She’s not dead because I hired her
. I’m not quite that egotistical. All the same, I want to see it through.”
“Okay. You drive. We’re going to need to make a stop on the way. I need to talk to Feeney.”
He’d been her trainer, her teacher, her partner. He was, though neither of them spoke of it, the man who stood as her father in the ways that mattered.
He had plucked her out of the pack when she’d still been in uniform, and made her his. She’d never asked Feeney what he’d seen that persuaded him to take on a green uniform. She’d only known that by doing so, he’d made all the difference.
She’d have been a good cop without him. She’d have made detective through her own need, dedication, and aptitude. And maybe, eventually, she’d have held the rank she held now.
But she wouldn’t have been the same cop without him.
When he’d earned his bars, he’d requested EDD. E-work had always been his specialty, and his passion, so his request for the Electronic Detective Division was a natural.
She remembered she’d been just a little annoyed he’d moved out of Homicide. And for the first few months, she’d missed him, seeing him, working with him, talking to him every day, like she might’ve missed her own hand.
She could’ve left this for morning—at least a decent hour of the morning. But she knew, had their positions been reversed, she’d want this knock on the door.
She’d have been damn pissed if she didn’t get the knock.
When he answered his face was sleep rumpled, making it more lived-in than usual. His hair, a gingery scrubbing brush mixed with silver, was standing straight out. As if the air around him had been suddenly ionized.
And while he might’ve been wearing a tattered robe in the surprising color choice of purple, his eyes were all cop.
“Who died?”
“Need to talk to you about that,” Eve told him. “But more how than who.”
“Well.” He scratched his jaw, and Eve could hear the rasp of his fingers on the night’s growth of beard. “Better come on in. Wife’s asleep. Let’s go on in the kitchen. Need coffee.”