She wanted to explode, to spew hot, molten, electric fury, so did the opposite. She went ice-cold.
“Where is she? Where’s he keeping her?”
“I don’t know. Dallas—”
“Don’t fuck with me, Mavis, not on this. Where’s his hole?”
“I don’t know! Even if I did, I couldn’t tell you because I had to promise. But I don’t know. It’s been a bazillion years since I ran with Sebastian and his kids, Jesus, since before I met you. You know that.”
“He’s holding a material witness to a murder, and the key to a hell of a lot more. What does he want for her?”
Mavis’s eyes went hard, went hot. Her voice matched it.
“It’s not like that. I knew I’d piss you off. I didn’t figure you’d piss me off, pulling out the hard-ass goddamn cop.”
“I am a hard-ass goddamn cop. A hard-ass goddamn murder cop with a thirteen-year-old girl in the morgue.”
“Okay.” Peabody held up both hands. “Why don’t we—”
Both Eve and Mavis rounded on her with looks that burned to the bone.
Peabody lowered her hands. “Nothing,” she muttered. “Nothing at all.”
“You need to shut up for two damn minutes and fucking listen,” Mavis snapped. “He didn’t tell me much because he wants her to tell you, get it? He didn’t want it all filtered out through me. So I know one of his kids found her, and she was hurt. The kid brought her in.”
“Hurt how?”
“I don’t know, okay?” Mavis snapped it back again. “I don’t. He saw the media reports, and he’s been working on convincing her to talk to you.”
“So he tags you up, puts you in the middle of it.”
“Yeah, he tagged me up because he figured I’d have a better shot at getting you to agree to her conditions than he would going direct. Tell me he’s wrong.”
“Conditions, my ass.”
“You’re really being an asshole, so Number Two and I are going to take a walk around the room and simmer it. Peabody, could I get some water?”
“Sure.” And reading the room, Peabody left it rather than using the AC.
“He didn’t tell me a lot,” Mavis continued as she walked. “But I saw the reports, too. And he told me enough for me to figure out it’s more than that poor dead girl and this scared-out-of-her-shit one. It’s all these. We know what it’s like.”
She turned back, eyes still hot, but brimming now. “I don’t know exactly what this is, but I can buy a fricking clue, and we know what it’s like, you and me. So you’re really pissed off, and I’m really pissed off. And all I can think is what if somebody took Bella, took her and hurt her, and—”
“Don’t. Don’t do that.” Struggling to find her calm again, Eve pressed her fingers to her eyes. “He had no business bringing you into it, because you know what it’s like, and because you’d go there.”
“You don’t get pissed for me.” Mavis jabbed a finger toward Eve. “I can do that all by and for myself. And if you stop being pissed for a minute, you know why he came to me.
“You don’t have to like him. You don’t have to like or get what he does. But I know without him at that point in my life, I could’ve been on that board. He was what I needed when I needed it. Right now he’s what this girl needs.”
“What she needs is medical assistance and police protection. And those girls on the board, what they need is for her to tell me every goddamn thing she knows.”
“Great, mag, awesomelutely.” Mavis sat again, one hand running light circles over her belly. She glanced over as Peabody came back. “Thanks. So here it is.”
She took the moment to crack the tube, sip some water.
“She’s agreed—and I get the impression he had to tap dance, do backflips, and juggle at the same time—to talk to you, at a neutral location. Which is the house, our house.”
“Mavis—”
“Please.” Reaching out, Mavis took and gripped Eve’s hand. “She won’t come into Central. Jesus, neither would I back in my time. But she’ll meet you, talk to you at my place if you make some promises. Sebastian knows—and he’s convinced her—you won’t lie to me. And I won’t lie to them.”
“What promises?”
“You don’t arrest her. Dallas, she didn’t kill that other girl.”
“I know that. Peabody?”
“Whoever did,” Peabody began, “tried to throw it on Dorian. We know that. She’s a witness, not a suspect.”
“You have to promise not to arrest her,” Mavis repeated. “Or send her back to her mother, or yank her into the system, a foster home, a safe house. She feels safe right now.”
“You want me to promise to let a key witness go off to an unknown location with a guy who runs a gang of kids who grift and steal?”
“It’s not a gang, really. It’s more a kind of family. But wait. Sebastian thinks, once she’s talked to you, we’ll be able to convince her to go to an official safe house until you find who murdered Dorian’s friend. Especially if you let one of the kids, the kid who found her, go with her.”
“Dallas?” Peabody, very carefully, dipped a toe in again. “First priority is to find her, talk to her, get everything she knows. We can work out the rest. EDD’s still working on the op in the meantime.”
“You can’t charge or arrest Sebastian, either,” Mavis said quickly. “She trusts him, Dallas, and if you go after him for this, she’s not going to trust you.”
“You know if I agree to this, I’d have to go around command for it. More, they’ll know where you live, or will live.”
“I know what you think of him, but I know what I know. Sebastian would never do anything to hurt me or mine. And guess what? That includes your stubborn ass.
“We’ve both been hurt and alone. How scared were we?”
This time Eve pushed up to pace. Maybe, okay maybe, what ran through her was primarily anger, and a knee-jerk distrust of the man Mavis put her faith in. Beyond that, it blurred so many lines, left too many gaps.
And yet. Those faces on the board. All those faces. And the young girl in a drawer in the morgue.
“How do you know Dorian and Mina Cabot were friends?”
“He told me they made a pact, and they ran together, but got separated. That’s all he said about it because he wants her to tell you.”
It fit, she admitted, with her own deductions.
“If we agree to this, he gets one shot. If she balks, if she lies, deal’s off.”
“That’s fair.”
“When?”
“We can set it up as soon as I tell him you gave me your word. I gotta say something else.”
“Sure, hell, why not?”
“I know what you think of him, and I get it. But he was upset, really shaken. I can figure what this is, at least some of it. And I can tell you he wants whoever’s doing this as much as you do. If this didn’t work, he was going to talk her into making a recording for you, laying it all out. But he wants her to talk to you direct, you know? For her to see you, for you to see her. But either way, he wants to get you what you need to catch these bastards. Enough, he’s putting himself on the block for it.”
“I don’t like you in the middle.”
Smiling now, Mavis rose, walked over, wrapped around Eve. “How about I tell you if I help you help this girl, all these girls, I’ll feel solid on it. Could’ve been me, could’ve been you. Let me help fix it.”
“Tag him back.”
“You have to say it.”
“Christ. Fine. You’ve got my word.”
“Peabody?”
“You’ve got mine.”
“Okay. Most of the crews on the house will knock off soon, so I’m going back, and getting the nanny to come in, take Bellamina to the park. I don’t want her around this.”
“What nanny?”
“We hired August—you can run him if it makes you feel better, but Peabody already did.”
“August Fuller,” Peabody said. “Age fifty-eight, Special Forces, retired. Divorced, one offspring, male, age twenty-six, captain, army intelligence, who is currently dating Mavis’s head of security’s daughter. They’re clean.”
“And this guy wants to be a nanny?”
“He said it was time for some light and bright in his life, and he missed too much of his son’s growing up time. It’s just on-call mostly for now. But he’s more than a sitter, so nanny.”
“Okay, make the contacts.”
“You won’t be sorry. I’ve got a good feeling about it. Give me a few.”
When she walked out to make the contacts, Eve headed straight for coffee. “I can’t say I’ve got a good feeling about it.”
“I think I’m somewhere between the two of you. But like you always say, every detail matters. She’s going to give us a lot of details.”
“Maybe.”
She gulped down coffee as Roarke came in.
“Did you get it set up?”
“For the most part, yes, and Feeney’s filling in the gaps. I thought I’d leave it to them for now and see what I could do about the location search.” He glanced back. “I saw Mavis in what seemed a very intense ’link conversation.”
“Yeah, there’s that happening.” And Eve considered. He’d met Sebastian, and he sure as hell knew every angle of every con. Maybe she didn’t really suspect one here, but …
“We may not need the location search. We’ve got a line on Dorian Gregg.”
“Well now, that’s excellent news, and yet you don’t look pleased about it.”
“I don’t like the catches and contingencies. Sebastian—Mavis’s Sebastian—found her. Or she found him. Unclear at the moment.”
“Ah.”
“Yeah, ah. I think maybe you should come along for this. You’ve got a rhythm with him I don’t. It could be we have to convince him Dorian needs a safe house to get her to go in one.”
“How long has she been with him?”
“Unclear. Damn it. He didn’t tell Mavis enough to give me a jump, and claims he wants the story to come straight from the kid.”
“That would make good sense, actually.”
“Yeah, but—” She broke off as Mavis came back. “Roarke’s going with us on this.”
“Sure, but he has to promise.”
“Fuck it all, Mavis, he can’t arrest anybody. He’s not a cop.”
“And thank the gods for it” was Roarke’s fervent opinion.
Mavis laid one hand on her belly, the other on her hip. “He has to promise anyway.”
Eve pressed her fingers to her eyes, breathed in what she could of calm. “Fine. Roarke give Mavis your word you’ll stick to the deal I made.”
“I’m to give my word on a deal without knowing what I’m giving my word on?”
“I’ll fill you in,” Eve snapped. “Just give it.”
Ignoring Eve, he turned to Mavis. “Do you need this?”
“Yeah, sorry, but yeah.”
“Then you have it. I’ll adhere to what the lieutenant’s agreed to.”
“Mag. Whew. We need about an hour. I really want Bella away from the house, plus the crew’ll be gone. Better that way. I’ll go on back now, and you can come in like an hour.”
“Peabody, go with Mavis.”
“You don’t trust me!”
“I trust you. I just don’t know enough about all the rest to feel good about you heading back alone. That’s all. Peabody’s with you.”
“Okay, iced. They’re into the master baths, Peabody.” Mavis pointed at Peabody, at herself, then shot two thumbs up.
“Oh boy, oh boy!” Peabody scrambled up. “Can’t wait.”
“Well, cha,” Mavis said. “See you soon.” She glanced at the faces on the board one last time. “You’re doing the right thing.”
As she walked out with Mavis, Peabody glanced back at Eve and mouthed, I’ve got her.
After they’d gone, Roarke turned to Eve. “All right then, what did I just give my word on?”
Eve scrubbed her hands over her face. “I hope to all those gods you called on it’s the right thing.”
And told him.
He listened, waited, watched her pace it off.
“I understand completely why you distrust the man, and feel you’re being pressured—with Mavis as the vise—to agree to something that doesn’t feel quite right to you.”
“You’re going to say ‘but,’ and I’m going to want to punch you for saying ‘but.’”
“But,” he said, nonetheless, “you know she’s alive. You know she wasn’t found by the people who abducted her, held her, who killed Mina Cabot. However you feel about Sebastian, she has been and is safe.”
“And we’ve devoted how many men, how many hours into finding her while he’s had her hidden away? It’s very likely she started running with his gang when she got into New York last year. Then she goes poof, but he doesn’t report it. Those kids come and go—how many come to hard ends?”
“That’s one way to look at it. Another is, at least for a time, they have somewhere to go where they’re not beaten, raped, or otherwise abused. You have your stand on it,” he continued, “and it’s natural for you. Mine’s a bit more flexible. Regardless, Eve, you’ll soon know what she knows.”
“That’s the only thing keeping me from kicking him in the balls.”
“Let me give you something to lighten the mood you’re completely entitled to.”
She shot him a simmering look. “You’re pandering.”
“Well, I am, but it seems fair enough. On the other hand, in addition to the profile Willowby—who’s a sharp one—already established, we have three more. And, not to bang my own drum too loudly, they’ll stand. Each has a nice deep financial pool to dip into—varying amounts, of course,” he continued, as he got coffee for himself.
Fizzies equaled the drink of choice in the EDD lab, and he’d had enough fake sugar for the next six months.
“Varying backgrounds as well, and some with a whiff of trouble with law enforcement. Some with a history, minutely created, of pedophilia and/or purchasing from other outlets.”
“That’s quick work.”
“Time was a factor, after all. And now the team in EDD is working with some hack we devised. More work there, but we’ve enough time, I think, to complete it. And if so, we’ll be able to hack into other buyers’ accounts, pull out the information you’ll need to break this all down.”
“Or the feds will.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Hey, me, too. But tomorrow, I call them in. I’m going to push hard for a joint op with the NYPSD in the lead. I can make a case for that, especially if we’re able to hand over data that turns into arrests—by those feds—outside of New York. And more, that leads to finding and rescuing victims—these and, with more luck, at least some who came before.”
She drank coffee, paced. “Dorian changes some of it, maybe. She gives us the New York location, we put together an op to take them down—without alerting the auction, the other buyers. We can work on that. We can make that happen. We put EDD on it, inside the location, keep up the appearances of the sales. We could hand the data to the feds for an assist there if we need it. We locate the auction site, the people involved there.”
“Thinking ahead.”
“Yeah, I’m thinking ahead. It’s like that thing with the things.” She held up her hand, made a space in the air with her thumb and forefinger.
Roarke decided he knew her mind as well as he knew his own when he understood. “Dominoes.”
“Yeah, yeah, those things. Line them up right, knock one down, and they all fall. We just have to line it up right, knock down the right one.”
In under two days, she thought. But no pressure.
“Then let’s consider finding Dorian this way a stroke of luck.” When she snarled, he smiled. “You worried for her. You dreamed of her and worried. She’s alive and safe. You’ll help keep her that way. Meanwhile.”
He glanced at the time.
“I’ll let Feeney know I’m on a related project with you.”
“You can’t tell him about Dorian. I’m not bringing more people into the gray area mess of this.”
“And I won’t. I can work with them remotely, come back in, or set up the team in the home lab. Whatever seems best. We’ll know more, won’t we, after we talk to the young witness?”
“Let’s walk over there. It’ll help clear my head. We should probably have a vehicle, but I need to walk.”
“We’ll walk, then walk back for it. I’ll just sign off with Feeney.”
“Do that. I need to swing through the bullpen.”
When they started out, using the glides, as she needed physical room as well as head space, she considered how to handle a teenage witness, a likely traumatized one.
“If I push her too hard, she’ll pull back. If I don’t push her enough, she’ll leave things out we need. I’m going by her history with cops and authority,” Eve added.
“You’ll find the way, and there’s Peabody to soften it up if need be.”
“Kids are tough. Especially … I should bring Mira in.”
“And I agree, but take this round first. The girl’s already outnumbered, isn’t she?”
“Plus, I’d have to ask Mira to take this goddamn oath. It just puts her in a squeeze. Mavis is getting the kid out—Bella—and that’s the right call. She’s got some guy cruising toward sixty, used to be Special Forces, doing the nanny thing.”
“August.”
As they walked outside, Eve stared at him. “You know about that?”
“I met him, briefly, a few days ago when I went by the house to check on things. Bella’s very happy with him.”
“Peabody ran him.”
“Of course.”
“You did, too.”
“Of course. I’d have mentioned it, but it slipped my mind, and we’ve been busy the last couple of days.”
“You should be at your fancy office in Midtown.”
He took her hand before she could avoid it. “I’ve been there. All’s well. And I admit the challenge of this particular op has been very satisfying. I detest the reason it’s needed, but the work itself? Fascinating.”
“How many laws have you broken?”
“Not a one—after I took the template of it all in to Feeney. I may have bent a few to get there.”
“I’m bending a few right now,” she muttered.
“Not laws,” he corrected. “Regulations. They may come to the same to you, but you’ll soon bend them right back again.”
“If she refuses to go into a safe house … Not an option,” Eve decided. “We have to convince her. I’ve got a thought on that, now that I’m thinking.”
“I’ll pray to those gods that thought isn’t bringing her home with us.”
“Jesus, no. No way in hell. She’s a victim, sure, and a wit, but she’s also a troublemaking hard case. I’ve got an idea what might work. Maybe.”
She glanced toward the playground as they reached it. Bella, in her pink-and-blue shorts, her sunny curls flying, squealed as a man pushed her on a swing.
He looked fit, Eve observed, with his sturdy boxer’s build and carved biceps flexing. He wore jeans and a T-shirt, and his hair close to the skull. Like his body, his face was carved, sharp angles with deep brown skin tight over them.
Sunshades hid his eyes, but his lips curved in an easy smile as he pushed, with apparently inexhaustible patience, the little girl on the swing.
“He looks military,” Eve observed. “And like if anybody tried to mess with Bella, he’d chew them up, then spit out their gnawed bones.”
“Mavis took the body found here to heart. He’s as much bodyguard for Bella as nanny. More, I’d say.”
“Good then. That’s good.”
As she spoke, Bella spotted them.
“Das! Ork! Das! Ork!”
She tried to scramble out of the safety seat, then lifted her arms to August as she babbled with glee.
He hefted her, then with a nod to them, set her down so she could run.
When she reached them, Bella wrapped around Eve’s legs, then tried climbing up them.
“Okay. Okay.” Eve hauled her up, received wet, enthusiastic kisses in return.
“Wing! Wing with Aug.”
“Yeah, I got that.”
“Lieutenant, I’m August Fuller. Roarke, good to see you again.”
“Aug,” Bella said, beaming. “Wing Das, Aug. Wing Das!”
“Yeah, well, thanks, but we’ve got to work.”
“Aw!” She gave Roarke a side-eye with a flirtatious smile. “Wing, Ork.” Then patted his cheek.
“You’re hard to resist, darling, but I have to go with Dallas.”
“Aw.”
“Why don’t you show them how you can slide?”
“Whee!” She scrambled down. “See, see, see!” And ran to the little slide.
Eve thought of the dream she’d had where the child she’d been discovered the thrill of a slide.
Bella wouldn’t dream such dreams, she thought. Because she lived them.
She watched Bella climb the steps to the smallest slide, settle her butt, lift her hands high, and squeal all the way down. Laughing her crazy laugh, she raced around to do it all again.
“She’s a pistol, that girl. I won’t let anything happen to her, believe me. The kid stole my heart inside five minutes.”
“Are you from New York, Mr. Fuller?”
“Me, no. I’m from nowhere, really. But my son lives here, and I’m trying to make up for some lost time. You can’t get it back, but you can try to make up for it. Landed a bonus with Bella. She sure brings the sun to a cloudy day.
“Come say goodbye, Bella. Dallas and Roarke have to go to work. Good luck,” he added. “I don’t know what’s going on, but I know it’s something. So good luck.”
When they finally got away, Eve nodded. “He’s solid. Good choice. I figured if they ever went for somebody to help out there, it’d be some fresh-faced girl the kid would run all over and back again.”
“If they’d gone with fresh-faced, I believe she’d have had martial arts training and a security background.”
“You’re right. They’re careful. Now they’ll have two cops living on premises, a security system you designed, and this August guy in addition to the security team when Mavis has a gig.”
“Still you worry a bit.”
“Only because she does shit like she’s doing now.”
When they approached the gates, she paused, looked through them. “They’ve got actual grass now, and some of those flowery things Peabody’s been dying to put in. A couple trees.”
“Considerable work done on the backyard as well, and the interior. Still a work in progress, but progress is moving right along. Even a bit ahead of schedule, though that may change.”
He pressed the intercom, entered a code. “We’re at the gate. We walked.”
“Two seconds!” Mavis’s voice came through clear.
The gates opened, and once again taking Eve’s hand, Roarke walked through.
“They’ll want you to see some of that progress, before or after. Pressed for time, I know, but take a moment or two. Their hearts are in this place, and it shows already.”
“I don’t know how this is going to go, so I can’t promise. But I can say it all looks great, amazing, mag, whatever.”
“There’s a start.”
Mavis came out, stood on the porch as they walked up the drive. “You’re a little early, but they’re on their way. I promise. You can take a look around some, right? The kitchens are basically done. They’re both abso-mag.”
“Relax,” Eve ordered. “I gave my word.”
“I know, I know. I still got jitteries.”
She pulled Eve inside. “Looking good, right?”
Eve saw mostly empty space, a lot of tarps, tools neatly organized, workbenches, some strips of paint on a wall.
And light, a lot of light.
“This part’s not much different from when you saw it last, but come back. Okay, they’ve gutted the powder room, and started—what’s it—stripping down and repairing the molding and stuff in I think it’ll be like a music room maybe. Or a sitting-type room or reading-type room. I keep changing my mind.
“But back here! Ta-de-da-de-dah!”
Color. It saturated. The light poured through the glass wall in the rear and saturated the saturation.
The counters, enough acreage of them to feed a battalion of starving soldiers, softened the bold—a little—in a creamy, lightly blue-grained white. The tiles behind them formed a crazed but visually stunning patchwork of colors. Eve couldn’t think of any left out, with the reds, blues, greens, yellows. Orange and pink and everything else.
The cabinets above them picked up the theme, with some glass fronted to break it up.
It should’ve been too much, Eve thought, and yet it was just right. It was Mavis.
The walls picked up the faint blue graining in the counters, and woodwork gleamed, rich and natural. Light fixtures dripped with teardrops in all the colors.
They’d gone down to the original wood on the floors, and it worked.
Somehow it all worked.
Add the eating space to one side, the lounging space on the other, where sofas and chairs already lived, and it was somehow perfect.
“Okay, wow.”
Mavis bounced on her toes. “Do you mean it, or is that covering ‘Holy shit, what’s she done?’”
“No, I mean it. It’s completely you. It’s stupid happy.”
“I am stupid happy.” Sobbing with it, she threw her arms around Eve. “With hormones! I love it so much. We can’t stay here yet. Too much for Bella to get into, and too much left to be done. But when we get the screen installed in the lounge, we’re having a vid night and snuggling on the couch. Oh, my studio. You should—”
She broke off when the gate signaled.
“Okay, okay, that’s going to be Sebastian. Let me open the gates.”
“I’ll do it,” Roarke told her.
“Thanks. I’ll tell Leonardo—he’s upstairs doing some organizing in his design center—which is total. And Peabody. She just went next door to bask a little.”
“Get Leonardo,” Eve said. “I’ll text Peabody.”
“Okay.” But she gripped Eve’s hand again. “It could’ve been you or me, remember.”
“I’ve got it.”