“He might not have been as careful. If we find something…he might have left something behind.” She stopped, stared at the sketch of the man she hunted. “Still honing his craft, still finding his way. We did globals, but maybe we didn’t go back far enough.”
“I’ll set it up. I can do it faster,” he said before she could argue. “Then it’ll take a good long while for any results you can actually work with. I’ll set it up, then we’re getting some sleep.”
“All right. Okay.”
The dreams came in blurry spurts, as if she were swimming through fog that tore and re-formed, tore and re-formed. The clock ticked incessantly.
Over that endless, echoing tick, she heard the sounds of a battle raging. A firefight, she thought. Blasts and bullets and the wild shouts and calls of the men and women who fought.
She could smell the blood, the smoke, the burning flesh before she could see it. Carnage carried a sickly sweet aroma.
As vision cleared, focused, she saw the battle was on a stage, and the stage was dressed to depict the city in a strange, stylized form. Buildings, all black and silver, were tipped and tilted above hard white streets that jagged into impossible angles or inexplicable dead ends.
And the players on stage were dressed in bright, elaborate costumes that flowed through bloody pools and swirled in dirty smoke as they murdered each other.
She looked down on it all with interest, from her gilded box seat. Below, in a pit where bodies lay twisted, she could see the orchestra madly playing their instruments. Their fingers ran with blood from razor-sharp strings.
On stage, the shouts and calls were songs, she realized, fierce, violent. Vicious.
War could never be otherwise.
“The third act is nearly over.”
She turned, looked into the face of the killer as he took a huge stopwatch out of the pocket of his formal black.
“I don’t understand. It’s all death. Who writes these things?”
“Death, yes. Passion and strength and life. Everything leads to death, doesn’t it? Who would know that better than you?”
“Murder’s different.”
“Oh, yes, it’s artful and it’s deliberate. It takes it out of the hands of fate and puts the power into the one who creates death. Who makes a gift of it.”
“What gift? How is murder a gift?”
“This…” He gestured to the stage as a woman, brown hair bloody, face and body battered, was borne in on a stretcher. “This is about immortality.”
“Immortality’s for the dead. Who was she when she was alive?”
He only smiled. “Time’s up.” He clicked the stopwatch, and the stage went black.
Eve came rearing up in bed, sucking for air. Caught between the dream and reality, she closed her hands over her ears to muffle the ticking. “Why won’t it stop?”
“Eve. Eve. It’s your ’link.” Roarke curled his fingers over her wrists, gently tugged her hands down. “It’s your ’link.”
“Jesus. Wait.” She shook her head, pulled herself into the now. “Block video,” she ordered, then answered. “Dallas.”
Dispatch, Dallas, Lieutenant Eve. Report to Union Square Park off Park Avenue. Body of unidentified female, evidence of torture.
Eve turned her head, met Roarke’s eyes. “Acknowledged. Notify Peabody, Detective Delia, request Medical Examiner Morris. As per procedure on this matter, relay notification to Commander Whitney and Dr. Mira. I’m on my way. Dallas out.”
“I’ll be going with you. I know,” Roarke said as he rose, “you don’t make prime bait with me along, but that’ll be Gia Rossi left on the ground. And I’m going with you.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Ah, Eve.” His tone changed, softened. “So am I.”
18