Peabody came back in while Eve worked another series of cross-checks.
“McNab gave me a contact, Detective Willowby. She just transferred to Central from the four-oh-six. She’s in SVU, mostly on crimes against minors. I reached out.”
Because Peabody knew the perils of Eve’s ass-biting visitor’s chair, she perched warily on the very edge. “She’ll run Mina’s picture against any of the vids or photos they’ve got. And there are dark web chat rooms—sharing sites. They—”
“Share or trade slaves—sex or domestic.”
“You knew about that. Jesus, Willowby says some of the minors they pull out claim it’s consensual, or ordained—or whatever they’ve been indoctrinated to believe. Sometimes they start them off really young, even babies they…”
As it struck her, Peabody forgot about the chair, had her ass bitten, pushed up. “Sorry. Sorry, Dallas.”
“Nothing to be sorry about. It gives me insight. I probably had a couple more years before he put me on the market. He fucked that up by raping me, so he couldn’t market me as a virgin. They’re usually worth more. Then again, some like them broken in.”
Or just broken, she thought. She’d sure as hell qualified.
“But this wasn’t that,” Eve continued. “Probability’s high she was snatched because of her looks and her age—twelve at the time of the snatch. But why keep her so long if you’re going to put her on the market? Personal use and/or porn profit hits the highest on the scale. And when she ages out of kiddie porn and your preferences, you pass her on to the next.”
“That’s more or less what Willowby told me. She also said, when I told her about the mani-pedi and her general condition, the victim fits what they call the Princess category.”
Intrigued, Eve stopped, swiveled around. “Princess—as in treated as such?”
“Yeah. Compliance drugs probably, at least at first. But pretty clothes, makeup, some sparkles, a fun room—no windows likely, locked door for sure. Toys and stuff for younger ones.”
“The carrot instead of the stick. I never get why it isn’t candy or ice cream instead of the stick. Who really can’t wait to eat a damn carrot?”
She considered it, tossed carrots aside. “The stick comes in for lack of cooperation. A street kid—they’re likely to wallow pretty deep in all the goodies. But somebody like Mina wouldn’t be as easily turned.”
She glanced at her wrist unit. “Let’s see if Morris can tell us any more.”
Even as she started to stand, her ’link signaled. She looked at the display. “The victim’s parents. Hold on. Lieutenant Dallas.”
The man on-screen looked ghost pale, the blue of his red-rimmed eyes glassy. “Lieutenant Dallas.” His voice cracked. “I’m—”
“Mr. Cabot. I’m very sorry for your loss.”
“Sharlene—Detective Driver said you were absolutely sure.”
“Yes, sir. I understand how difficult this is for you and your family. I can promise you that finding out who took Mina from you is priority for me and my partner.”
“She—our Mina—was she—”
Raped, Eve finished in her head, because she understood the father couldn’t quite say the word. “Mina is with the chief medical examiner of New York. Let me assure you she couldn’t be in more skilled or compassionate hands than Dr. Morris’s. My partner and I are about to go there now.”
“We need to see her. We need to bring her home.”
“You won’t be able to take her home at this time, but I can arrange for you to see her. I can arrange transportation for you, Mr. Cabot, and accommodations if you plan to stay overnight.”
“We won’t come home until Mina comes with us. We need to bring our girl home. We need—”
He broke off, broke down. While he struggled, Eve continued to speak.
“We need to keep Mina here for a while. When we speak with Dr. Morris, we’ll let him know you’re coming in to see her. It would be helpful if I could speak to you and your wife, your son if he’s coming with you. I understand you’ve gone over everything about her disappearance with Detective Driver and her partner, but it would be helpful.”
“We need to know what happened!”
Grief, immense and unimaginable, ripped through every word.
“We’re going to do everything we can to find out. Do you want me to arrange transportation and accommodations for you, Mr. Cabot?”
“No, I— We’ll drive in. We’ll drive in. If—if—if you could give me the name of a hotel near Mina. I think we should stay near Mina. I don’t know where she is.”
He covered his face with his hands.
“I still don’t know where my baby is.”
“Mr. Cabot, we’re going to book rooms for you at the Hanover Hotel. It’s very near Mina. Is your son coming with you?”
“Yes, yes.”
“We’re going to arrange two bedrooms, with a family area. Will that work?”
“Yes, thank you, yes.”
She shot a finger at Peabody as she gave Oliver Cabot the address. “They have a parking garage. I can arrange for someone to meet you there and take you to Mina. It’s only a few blocks.”
“You’re very kind.”
“Just contact me when you arrive. Again, we’re very sorry for your loss.”
“I think you mean that. Lieutenant, can you tell me fairly, are you good at what you do?”
“I’m good at what I do.”
“I hope you mean that, too. Thank you. We’ll leave here within the hour.”
When Eve ended the call, Peabody sighed. “That was almost as rough as a notification. He tried so hard not to lose it.”
“Did you get the rooms?”
“Two-bedroom suite. I went with the concierge level. They’re going to want quiet.”
“Okay. Let’s go be good at what we do.”
Eve knew Morris was good at what he did, and hoped, as she and Peabody walked down the white tunnel of the morgue, he could tell them more about Mina Cabot.
The air smelled of chemical lemons and death sneaking under it, with an overlay of bad coffee. Their footsteps echoed off the glossy white tiles.
Behind the doors of Morris’s autopsy suite, music played. Something Eve found almost obsessively cheerful with a lot of guitars and young female voices harmonizing.
With a clear protective cape over his sky-blue suit, Morris closed his Y-cut on Mina with meticulous stitches. He’d done a trio of braids today in his long black hair and joined them together with a thick band that matched his precisely knotted—she supposed it was mauve—tie.
He looked up, paused. “It’s hateful, always, when it’s a child, so I’m giving her music girls her age generally enjoy. Cut volume by half,” he ordered, and the voices went to murmurs.
“Her parents, maybe her younger brother, are coming in. About three hours, I’d say.”
“She’ll be ready for them. Such a sweet face.” He touched the back of his sealed hand to Mina’s cheek. “Peabody, get us all something cold, would you? The killing blow had some force behind it, enough the tip of the sharp end went through her and pierced through her back between her shoulder blades. A slightly upward trajectory.”
“From below.”
“Face on, slightly below the entry point.”
“She had splinters in both palms.”
Morris took the ginger ale Peabody knew he usually preferred, cracked the tube. “The lab will analyze the weapon, but the edges were rough. She grabbed it, picked up the splinters as her hands slid over it.”
Eve nodded, paced, visualized. “Most likely? She was the product. She had value. She had the weapon first to fight someone off or defend herself. The killer gets it away from her, she fights—bruised knuckles—tries to get it back—splinters. And in the struggle, it ends up in her.”
“With some force,” Morris added.
“Somebody’s pissed enough, or distracted enough trying to control her, it rams into her.”
“It hit her heart—a blessing, I suppose, as she wouldn’t have suffered.”
“But she didn’t fall—after the blow,” Eve said. “I didn’t find any injury to indicate she fell. And I’m looking at her bare knees now—so she didn’t go down on them, either, so the killer didn’t just let her drop. But there’s a bruise on her hip. From a blow, maybe a kick?”
“A kick, likely from the slightly rounded toe of a shoe. Postmortem, but very close to TOD. No other injuries,” Morris confirmed, “other than the killing wound and her knuckles. A product, you said. Of value.”
“Abduction, not runaway. Everything points to abduction. No ransom demand, and the family would have scraped together a decent amount. She was worth more than that to somebody else, somebody who kept her in French manicures.”
“Yes, I noted that. They also kept her healthy. Body, hair, skin. No signs of illegals abuse. And she’s a virgin. No sexual penetration, no rape, no signs of sexual assault.”
Didn’t take her for personal use then, Eve concluded.
“Virgins are usually worth more. What did she eat last?”
“Now, there’s something interesting. She had a green salad with carrots, tomatoes, cucumbers, chickpeas, a portion of grilled white fish and brown rice, sautéed spinach—very healthy—and a mixed berry tart.”
“Dessert?”
“A healthy, rounded meal—no alcohol in her system. Herbal tea, unsweetened. However, there are traces of vomit in her esophagus and in the back of her throat. Some scrapes on the back of her throat.”
Morris lifted two fingers, mimed sticking them into his mouth.
“She stuck her fingers down her throat.” Eve moved closer to the body. “Puked up some dinner, faked being sick. She had a plan.”
“Since I see no signs she binged and purged on a regular or habitual basis, I agree.”
“Distract whoever’s holding her long enough to make a break for it. She got outside, but he caught up with her.”
“I’ll mention her underwear.”
“Her underwear?”
“Her clothes are, certainly, conservative, but age appropriate. Under them, the bra and panties? More mature, sexier. I sent them to Harvo.”
And the Queen of Hair and Fiber would tell Eve everything there was to know about them.
“She also has the clothes, and a sample of Mina’s hair. You’ll have the tox report shortly, but as I said, there’s no signs of illegals use or alcohol use—not habitual.
“She was healthy, had good muscle tone, excellent dental hygiene—some minor straightening there about two years ago. No broken bones in her short life. What, I wonder, might she have done if allowed to live the rest of it?”
“Can’t know, but we’re damn well going to find out who took the rest of it from her. Did you measure her—height? Peabody said the pants she was wearing—and they’re going to turn out to be the ones she wore at the snatch—were a little short. Her ID said five-four.”
“She added a half inch since then. How long ago was she taken?”
“Last November.”
“Not surprising she’d gain that half inch.”
“Okay. Good eye, Peabody. Would she have added elsewhere?”
“Developed more? Very likely at her age, yes. She was just beginning to bloom.”
“Appreciate it. The father’s going to let me know when they get in. They’re going to stay at the Hanover. I’ll give you a heads-up.”
“We’ll take care of them. And her. I’m going to wish you good hunting, both of you.” He looked down at Mina again. “Such a sweet face.”
As they left, Eve heard him order the music up again.
“Let’s hit the lab. We may be able to give Dickhead a shove on the tox and the blood.”
“Got a bribe ready?”
Since she knew how it worked, Eve rolled her shoulders instead of her eyes. “It’s baseball season. I can toss out a couple of box seats. We hit him first,” she continued as they headed down the tunnel. “He got so damn pissy when we went straight to Harvo before, and I want the blood and tox reports.”
“And the underwear,” Peabody added. “What Morris said fits in with the porn theory, especially since she hadn’t been raped or had sex.”
“There are lots of ways to rape without penetrating.”
Understanding her lieutenant had firsthand knowledge, Peabody fell silent.
Through the buzz of activity and sea of white coats in the lab, Eve spotted the dome of Dick Berenski’s—chief lab tech’s—head.
It moved right, paused, moved left as he used his rolling chair to cover his work counter. Maybe she’d have preferred to go straight to Harvo, but antagonizing Berenski—he’d earned the name Dickhead—wouldn’t get her the reports.
He might have sensed her, as his gaze flicked up, then narrowed on her as she and Peabody moved through the maze toward his workstation.
He’d shaved the molting caterpillar off his top lip so at least she didn’t have to test her willpower by not looking at it. His spidery fingers continued to work as he curled that naked top lip.
“You know how long ago we got those samples? How many cases are ahead of yours?”
“The victim’s parents are on their way into New York. I’m checking in with you before we see if Harvo’s got anything on hair and fiber. The victim’s clothes are an angle we need to pursue.”
“Harvo’s got a load of her own. You’re not the only cops who want results yester-fucking-day.”
“Right now, to my knowledge, we’re the only cops who have a thirteen-year-old victim who was abducted walking home from school, brought to New York, and held for over seven months before she got a jagged plank of wood through her chest.”
She started to bring up the box seats, but wanted to vent a little first.
“Right now our theory is a kiddie porn operation, and I’m going to ask Harvo to prioritize the sex underwear she had on, as we might be able to track that back to the sonofabitch who snatched her so some other sonofabitch can pay to jerk off looking at her in the goddamn sex gear.
“And,” she added, fired up now, “since you made it clear you’re king of the lab, we’re notifying you of same.”
“Jesus please us, take it down a notch.” He hunched his thin shoulders and scowled. “I got your tox results right here.” He jabbed a finger at one of his screens. “Clean. No alcohol, no drugs, legal or otherwise. I bumped you up. Vic’s a kid, vic goes to the front of the line.”
Not a complete Dickhead, she thought. This time.
“Nothing?”
“Nada. No way to tell if somebody dosed her previous—say, forty-eight hours before TOD—with something that dissipates. But her tox is clean. So’s the blood samples you sent in that aren’t the vic’s.”
Eve’s antenna quivered. “Which weren’t hers?”
“I did the blood myself. My people are jammed.” He rolled down the other end of the counter, nodded at another screen.
“The sample from the shirtsleeve, the pants—both right side—don’t match the vic’s. Wrong blood type.”
“I need DNA.”
He sent her a sour look. “Are you looking at the screen, Dallas?”
“If I knew what the hell’s jumbling around on there, I’d be sitting in your chair.”
“I’m running the DNA. You shoulda paid more attention in science class.”
“I have people like you for that. How long before you ID the blood?”
“I just started the run, for fuck’s sake. Takes time, doesn’t it? Even if the DNA’s flagged for prior bad acts and whatever. I’m damn good, but I’m not a magician.”
Then his machine dinged.
DNA sample identified.
“Well, kick my ass and call me Sally! There you go.”
“Dorian Gregg,” Eve read. “Age thirteen—a few weeks younger than the vic. Freehold, New Jersey, mother Jewell Gregg, professional mother status. Father unknown.”
“She’s got a sheet, Dallas.”
Eve nodded, studying the thumbnail photo on-screen. “That’s why she popped so quick.”
“Shoplifting.” Peabody scanned her PPC. “Age ten. Truancy—got nailed twice there. Runaway—twice there, too, ages nine and eleven. She’s got an assigned caseworker.”
“Kids killing kids,” Berenski muttered.
“I don’t think so. She was there,” Eve said. “Same age as the victim, and look at her. That’s a really pretty girl. This one likes really pretty girls. Morris said that wood spear went into her with some force. Maybe another kid could manage it, maybe. But she’s five-six and a buck ten. That’s slender.”
“They got away together,” Peabody concluded.
“That reads more probable to me. Maybe, in the heat of battle, one kid could ram that weapon into another, but no way this kid then manages to get the body to another location. Not alone anyway.
“Thanks for the quick work,” Eve told Berenski. “Send me the reports, and copy Mira. Peabody, send Mira what we’ve got and let her know I need a consult. If not late this afternoon, tomorrow morning.”
“You figure some doucheball’s snatching little girls and using them for porn shit?” Berenski curled his lip again, but in disgust. “You get anything else on it, front of the line.”
“Appreciated. Let’s see if Harvo has anything.”
“Tell her I said it’s priority,” Berenski called out.
Peabody trotted behind Eve’s long strides. “You didn’t have to use the box seats.”
“So they’ll be handy next time. It’s going to be more than one.”
“More than one kid.”
“It already is more than one kid as I see it.” Eve worked her way through the counters and cubbies. “More than one running this, or grabbing girls. Pennsylvania, New Jersey. Close enough to New York, but different locations. You have to see to want, you have to study to get. And Mina wasn’t restrained.”
“Not like Mary Kate Covino and the others. Not like with Dawber.”
“Exactly. They’ve got a way to keep them contained. Maybe Mina managed to avoid the drugs if they use drugs. Cheeked them or dumped food. Two different types of girls—body type, coloring. Need to think.”
She checked the time. “We need to talk to Dorian Gregg’s mother and her caseworker, then speak with Mina’s family.”
Harvo sat in her fishbowl, keyboarding something while one of her strange tools hummed merrily along.
She’d kept the purple hair, at least on the top and a thick, eyelash-skimming fringe, but had gone pale pink on the rest.
Rather than a lab coat she wore a pink T-shirt and purple baggies, purple sneaks with pink laces.
She spotted Eve and Peabody.
“Yo, detecting duo. Figured you’d do the drop by. I’d’ve leapfrogged you on this one, but the chief beat me to it.”
“So he said. It’s appreciated.”
Harvo shrugged. “I have to try not to think too much when it’s a kid. It gets inside you. Hair, no issue. Natural color, healthy. It got soaked with rainwater, but I found some traces of argan oil and linseed extract.”
“In her hair?”
“Frizz fighter, right?” Peabody said.
Harvo did an air check mark with a purple-tipped finger. “You got it in one. A hydrating leave-in spray to kick the frizzies. I’m running the compound for brand ID.” She jerked a thumb at the humming machine.
“Nailed the pants, but can’t take credit. They had a label. Wool blend, navy, size five, regular. Morsett Uniform Suppliers. They have their main branch in Philadelphia.”
“That fits.”
“They’d been professionally hemmed—a good inch, so I’d say the regular length was too long—but short, too, you know, short. The shirt? A hundred percent cotton, broadcloth, and that’ll cost ya.”
“How much?”
“Well, considering the stitching, the buttons, the cut? I’m going to say a solid two-fifty. No label, which is a little odd, right? No evidence a label was removed. It’s a size medium, I can give you that, and I can tell you it had some tailoring for fit—taken in some at the torso, shortened about a half inch. Damn good job, too.”
“Like it was made for her?” Eve asked.
“Tailored to fit, abso-poso. And no manufacturer or brand label’s either a glitch or deliberate. I can run a search, but you’re gonna end up with multitudes for a white, short-sleeved, cuffed cotton broadcloth shirt. It’s a staple, right? You’d have zillions more in a blend, but higher-end, still multitudes.”
“Run it,” Eve decided. “Stick with outlets in the city to start. We could get lucky.”
“Here to serve. Now, the undies? Who puts sexy virgin undies on a kid that age? Pervs, sick fucks.” Harvo put up both hands, closed her eyes, took a breath. “Have to stop thinking. No labels.”
“No labels in the underwear?”
“Nada. You’ve got a silk georgette, white push-up bra with white lace trim, size thirty-two-A, and matching thong, size five. I’m giving you US sizes.”
“Okay.”
“These are high-end, the material, the design, the craftsmanship. I’m going to be able to narrow them easier than the shirt on a search. Best guess, the bra’s going to go for seven, eight hundred, even up to a grand.”
“Dollars? Dollars?” Eve repeated. “For a tit lifter?”
“A silk tit lifter with exceptional architecture and construction. The thong’s an easy three hundred.”
Eve jammed her hands in her pockets. “Three hundred for something designed not to cover your ass. People are just screwed up.”
“I’ve got a black thong and a baby-pink one so I have a choice on my tonight’s-the-night undies,” Harvo commented. “But thirty bucks for a thong’s top of my limit.”
Eve just nodded. “I’m going to file that data away, somewhere I never think of it again.”
“Hold on.” Harvo pushed her stool over to the machine. “Hair product’s Gretta Giselle’s Hydrating Frizz Barrier Spray. Retails for two-fifty—and yeah, dollars—for a sixteen-ounce bottle. Higher-end retail stores, salons, and like that.”
She pushed back. “I’ll need some time to get you manufacturers and outlets on the shirt and the undies. Undies, like I said, should be quicker.”
“As soon as you can. This is good information, Harvo. Thanks for the quick work.”
“It’s what I do. Hey, Peabody, next time I want some pictures of the Great Mavis and Peabody House Project progress.”
“Oh, I got them. I’ll text you some.”
“Solid.”
As they headed out, Eve ran it all through her head. “Tailored a pricey but basic white shirt. How much, you figure, for that end?”
“Taking it in, shortening it? At least fifty. If you had basic skills, it’s an easy do-it-yourself.”
“Maybe, maybe whoever had her knew how to tailor, or had somebody on tap who did. That’s about three-fifty for the shirt. No label, so yeah, maybe somebody knows how to sew, how to tailor. But it has to be different for the bra, right? Even the thong deal, but the bra, that’s got the tit-lifter stuff, the hooks.”
“More specialized,” Peabody agreed. “I’ve never made one—I mean, why would you? Well, no,” she considered. “Maybe you just can’t find one that fits right, so you learn to make them, or pay someone to custom. Getting the right fit in a bra is like everything.”
“They just keep tits from jumping around.”
Deliberately, Peabody aimed a solemn look at Eve’s chest. “Easy for you when your girls are high, firm, and small. Those of us with big, bouncy girls need a good fit so we don’t spend our days hauling it up, tugging it down, or just suffering.”
Peabody changed the solemn look to a sorrowful glance. “And the suffering’s real.”
“The vic was just thirteen—she had girls, but I’m going with high, firm, and relatively small. No way she needed a custom bra.”
“My big, bouncy girls and I can’t argue that point.”
“Maybe whoever took her and/or held her works in a place that makes underwear. Maybe runs a company that does. You could get products made or make them, without the labels if you wanted to keep that part of your life hidden.”
When they got back to the car, Peabody strapped in. “I don’t know. Why not just go to one of the places that sell sexy bras and thongs and buy them? You buy a standard-type brand, we’d have a hell of a time tracking it. And the shirt, that bugs me. So it’s a little wide, a little long. Why go to the trouble to tailor it?”
“Good questions. First, we make sure they weren’t hers to begin with. Odds are low, but we cross that off when we talk to her parents.”
Eve considered the time. “Plug in Dorian Gregg’s address in New Jersey. Get the estimated drive time.”
“Looks like it’ll take close to an hour, traffic depending.”
Not if they ran hot, Eve thought, at least until they got out of the city. “I can cut that down,” she said, and hit lights and sirens.
“Oh Jesus.” Peabody grabbed the chicken stick.
“Mina’s family’s on their way, but they have to get here…” She paused, shot around a maxibus, hit vertical to stream over a line of traffic. “And they have to check into the hotel, get to the morgue. They’ll want to spend some time there, and Morris will make time for them. We’re grabbing this lead while we’ve got it.”
Peabody tightened her safety belt a little more. She didn’t let out an easy breath until they hit the interstate. Eve still streaked down the road, but without the obstacle course of cars, trucks, cabs, buses, pedestrians, and bike messengers.
“Okay! Road trip. Can I have a snack?”
“You want a snack?”
“How about some chips?” To help ignore the speed hovering at about ninety—and she herself didn’t have the wheel—Peabody hit up the dash AC. “No-fail road trip food. We’ll go for the classic. You never cracked your tube of Pepsi. I’ll get that for you.”
“What’s the ETA now?”
“We should make the trip in about thirty-seven minutes at this speed.”
“That’ll do.”
“Do you think Dorian Gregg would go back home?”
“We find out why she took off—if she took off. No missing persons filed on her, but it could’ve been another abduction. If she and Mina broke out together, if that’s how it plays, home might be her first thought. That’s if they didn’t grab her up again, and that’s just as likely.”
Focused on the road, Eve ran through her thoughts.
“Same age group, both really attractive young girls. And look at them together. The contrast in coloring, in body types. If you’re making porn, they’d make a good girl-on-girl duo.”
“No drugs in the vic’s system, but—”
“That doesn’t mean they weren’t forced. It doesn’t mean they weren’t willing, either. ‘You do a few of these, we pay you, you get to wear sexy stuff, then we’ll let you go.’”
“But.”
“Mina was taken months ago, so willing doesn’t cut it for me, unless they managed to indoctrinate her. Add they got out, and she’s dead. Willing goes bottom of the list. No rape, no penetration strikes me as a marketing tool. Maybe any photos or vids they made, if they made them, serve as the same. Because there’s a serious investment here. Investments need a payday.”
“There could be others. Other girls. Boys, too.”
“Hard enough to hold two for all that time—no drugs, no restraints. But yeah, it’s possible. Maybe they have more locations to keep them, a network. Richard Troy didn’t get the idea of making me, selling me out of thin air. It’s a business. An old, tried-and-true business.”
“It has to cost, a lot, to buy a human being. Especially a young girl or boy, then it has to cost to keep them somewhere. Feed them, clothe them. You could get a licensed companion who’d do role-playing. You could buy a damn sex droid.”
“Those don’t hit the mark,” Eve said simply.
“What I mean is, it costs. So you have to have that kind of money. Maybe Roarke—”
Eve shot Peabody a look that had Peabody mentally rolling up in a ball.
“I don’t mean Roarke—not like that. God. I just mean maybe he heard some stuff about somebody with that sort of money. Or he could, in his Roarke way, dig around in that pool. And you probably don’t want that. That’s a terrible idea. Delete.”
It took Eve a minute, a struggle against her personal feelings, those flickers of her past. “No, I can’t say I want it, but it’s a good idea. He’s got connections, not just with stupidly rich people, but with the shelter, the school. And he does have a Roarke way. Let’s see where we are after we cross some of these angles.”
“All right.” Peabody waited until Eve blew past a pair of eighteen-wheelers like they were parked.
“And maybe we could have like a safe word if I say something or suggest something that hits you wrong on this. Like ‘aardvark.’”
“‘Aardvark’?”
“It’s the first thing that popped into my head.”
“What’s wrong with ‘shut the fuck up, Peabody’?”
“‘Aardvark’ could be code for that. So coworkers, suspects, and witnesses wouldn’t know. And if I shut the fuck up when you said ‘aardvark,’ you wouldn’t feel obliged to put your boot up my ass, which is painful.”
“I might feel obliged to put my boot up your ass before I said ‘aardvark.’”
“Yeah. There’s that.”
Eve let silence hang for nearly a mile.
“We don’t need a safe word, Peabody. And we’re not doing the job, not putting the victim first if you’re afraid to say or suggest something, or I’m touchy about what you say or suggest.
“What happened to me happened. I got through it. Whatever happened to Mina, she didn’t. We do the job and find out who and why.”
She waited another beat.
“That doesn’t mean my boot won’t meet your ass for other reasons.”
“I’m aware.” Then Peabody brightened. “But it’s a little bit of a smaller target now.”
Eve just smiled. “I have excellent aim.”