Page 77 of Fury In Death

What mattered at this point, Eve thought as she left, was: What was he now?

She drove home with plenty on her mind.

The first, the most vital? Who would Redman kill next? How would she stop him? How could she stop him?

Find him first.

And weaving through it, she asked herself: What would she do if someone took everything that mattered to her? If someone took the lives of those she loved?

Would she follow the law? Would she lose her mind? Would it be justice or vengeance that drove her?

Could it be both?

When she drove through the gates, her next was the hope he’d be home. She needed to see him, hear his voice, and know that her world, the one she’d made with him, through him, because of him, held steady.

At the end of the drive, she sat for a moment to push back the personal, to shut off the nagging sympathy for a man who’d brutally murdered two people.

The job demanded her skill, her focus, and her objectivity.

She walked into the house, and found the sight of Summerset and the cat waiting in the foyer just meant today her world held steady.

“Late, as usual,” Summerset said as the cat strolled over to greet her. “With a bit of blood on the hem of those trousers. Also quite usual.”

Damn it!

“It’s not mine, so lucky day. Then again, the next beat-to-shit body I stand over could be yours.”

She headed upstairs with the cat chugging along beside her. Out of sight, she checked her pants.

“Son of a bitch must have super vision to spot that tiny bit of blood. Maybe he can smell it with that snooty nose of his.”

Either way, by the time she wore them again, he’d have made sure no tiny bit of blood remained.

She had to give him that one.

She walked to her office, where the cat sprinted through the doorway to her sleep chair as if in a race, leaped up, claimed it.

Eve stopped, looked at her board.

Another victim to add, she thought, and the face of his killer. A man who’d lost everything but his life.

Roarke stepped out of his office into hers.

He knew that look, he thought, that weary look. Not physical fatigue, but emotional.

He walked to her, wrapped his arms around her from behind. And she turned, locked around him.

“What is it?”

She shook her head. “Everyone’s fine, everyone’s good. I just . . . I need to update my board, my book, write my report.”

“All right. Then a meal.” He drew back, looked into her tired eyes. “And you’ll tell me.”

“Yes. I’ll tell you.” She laid a hand on his cheek. “I brought you a present.”

“Did you now?”

“John Dearling, age fifty-eight, works for Banner-Wyst. Financials.”