New York to Dallas (In Death 33)

“There’s time enough. It isn’t a coincidence he’s there.”

“There are factors. We can get into them later. Right now I don’t want to fuck around, give him any excuse to start cutting her up. I’m cleared to work with the locals, and to take a partner or aide, or whatever. I need Peabody to stay here, to run this part of the investigation.”

He nodded, and saying nothing more crossed the long space to his desk in front of the sea of glass that gave him New York. “Caro, clear my schedule until further notice. I need a shuttle prepped and waiting at Transportation for a flight to Dallas, Texas. Right away.”

He clicked off the inter-office ’link. “Sit down a minute,” he told Eve.

“I didn’t ask you to go with me. I was going to, but you didn’t give me a chance.”

“Do you think you could go there without me? Ever?”

She closed her eyes a minute. “No questions? No objections? No ‘You can’t go back there’?”

“I’d be wasting my time and yours. Going will hurt you. Not going would break you.”

This time when she let out a breath, it shuddered. And she went to him, wrapped her arms around him. “Yes. And going back without you? I don’t want to think about it.”

“Then don’t.” He drew her back, looked into her eyes. “We’ll deal with this, you and I.”

“Yeah, we will. I—we—need to get home, pack.”

He merely turned to the ’link again. A few seconds later, Summerset appeared on screen.

“Eve and I are leaving for Dallas on urgent police business. I’ll need you to pack for both of us as quickly as possible, and have the luggage sent to my short-range shuttle at Transportation.”

“Right away. Will a week’s wardrobe be sufficient?”

“That should be fine. I’ll contact you with other instructions once we’re on our way. Thank you.”

Even through the rush, the worry, she had room for a good scoop of appalled. “Summerset’s going to pack for me? Like, my underwear?”

Roarke glanced at her, smiled. “You seem more disturbed by that than with the idea of facing down McQueen.”

“The first is humiliating, and I’m looking forward to the second. But I’ll suck it up. It saves time.”

“Spend it sitting down. Take a breath. I need to go consult with Caro for a few minutes.”

“Roarke.” She remained on her feet. “I know you probably think going with me on this kind of deal is part of the marriage rules.”

His lips curved in easy amusement. “You do love your rules.”

“When I know about them, and understand them. I know I give you a lot of grief about owning the world, or buying up planets. It’s not that I don’t get how much work, time, responsibility it takes to run everything you run. I do. So I know you’re putting a hell of a lot on hold for me. I don’t take it for granted.”

“Eve.” He waited a beat. “I once stood in a field in Ireland, alone, a little lost, and wishing for you more than I wished for my next breath. And you came, though I never asked you, you came because you knew I needed you. We don’t always do what’s right, what’s good. Not even for each other. But when it counts, down to the core of it, I believe we do exactly that. What’s right and good for each other.

“There’s no rule to that, Eve. It’s just love.”

Just love, she thought when he stepped out. She may have been going into her own personal hell to face a killer, but right at that moment she considered herself the luckiest woman in the world.

6

Eve spent the first part of the quick flight reviewing the rest of Whitney’s data, then pacing. Thinking, working out an approach. Until Roarke completed whatever he was doing on his PPC and set the device aside.

“Tell me what to expect when we get there.”

“Can’t be sure.” And it left her unsettled, edgy. “Ricchio, Lieutenant Anton, is Detective Jones’s direct superior. He runs Special Victims, so they deal with a lot of sex crimes and abuse to minors. Jones aimed her arrow right there.”

“And her twin aimed hers toward abuse and rape counseling. I imagine they’ve worked together.”