Page 89 of Fury In Death

You’ll get a report on a third victim connected to my current investigation inside an hour. I need an additional consult tomorrow on various aspects of the investigation, and the person I believe is responsible. I’ll see Morris first, and should be at Central before nine. I’ll make myself available when you are.

Eve had a response before they drove through the gates.

I’ll read your report asap, and I’ll have you scheduled for nine. Earlier if you arrive earlier.

Eve acknowledged the response, then studied the house silhouetted against the night sky.

“I never thought about having a house. I just realized I never thought about never thinking about having a house. My first apartment was about half the size of my office up there, and it was amazing to me. My own place, not wherever they’d dragged me. Not a room in a foster home, or in the state school, not even a shared room at the Academy—and that one was pretty amazing to me.

“But that boxcar of an apartment? Mine. I didn’t share that space with anyone. I could put whatever I wanted—that I could afford—in it, so that was mine, too. My things. I woke up every morning for weeks, maybe longer, stunned to find myself there. Then I got the bigger one, and that was amazing. More space, all mine. A place I’d earned doing what I wanted and needed to do. It didn’t matter that I spent more time at Central or in the field than I did in that space.”

“Because it was yours.”

“Yeah. I never thought about having a house, not like you did, or Peabody, or, as it turns out, Mavis. I didn’t want to move in here with you, because I was afraid to give up what was mine. I moved in here because I was more afraid of losing you.”

“You wouldn’t have. I couldn’t live without you, not then, not now.”

“I didn’t know that.” She let out a sigh. “I wouldn’t have believed that, not then. I loved you, and that terrified me. And I was so afraid that by living here, in something that was yours, I’d lose parts of myself.”

She looked at him now. “I didn’t. I found more parts of myself. I found more parts of you, too. And they work really well together. I never thought about having a house, but now I do. And coming home? No matter how bad things get, I know we can come home.”

He took her hand, kissed it. “You made it a home, for me, not just a space that was mine.”

“It’s a hell of a space. I have to get the report done and sent.”

“I’ll update your board for you.”

She nodded as they got out of the car. “Yeah, it works really well.”

She took his hand again as they walked in. “Do you ever wish I knew more about your business?”

“I don’t, no.”

“I mean if I actually knew stuff like you know cop stuff, so you could come home with some thorny problem and say: ‘Well now, Eve, what’s your thinking on the design for this whatsit that will make me another billion or so?’ Or ‘I’ve a holographic meeting in the morning at half-six with Joe-Bob in Sydney, care to sit in?’ ”

“I don’t believe I know a Joe-Bob in Sydney, and have no design in the works for a whatsit,” he said as they walked upstairs. “But if I did? Still no.”

“See, I don’t take offense, because I can’t blame you. I’m actually doing you a favor by staying out of all of it.”

“You absolutely are, and thanks for that.”

“Galahad’s still in the sleep chair.”

“He has a sense of these things. You’ll want coffee, so program one for me while you’re about it.”

She sat, programmed the coffee, plugged in her recorder so he could access the files. He sat at her auxiliary while she wrote the report.

By the time she’d finished, he sat on the sofa working on something on his PPC. With the cat across his lap.

She studied her updated board.

He saw it, too, she thought. Just the way he’d arranged her board showed he saw what she saw. Those connections, all linking back to a thirteen-year-old tragedy.

One deliberately caused, with the reason not yet known.

She found it interesting he’d included the timeline from that night. The time Redman had entered the twenty-four/seven, the time he’d left—both verified by in-store surveillance. The time of the explosion.

Roarke had calculated, and she’d intended to do, where on the route home Redman would have been, at a brisk walking pace.