Dark Rivers of the Heart

looking, with merry blue eyes, a choirboy face, and a sweet smile-but he was not handsome in the usual sense of the word. He was fifteen pounds overweight, somewhat pale, and he didn't appear to be rich. He dressed with less flair than any Nazarene passing out religious publications door-to-door.
        Frequently Miro asked her to replay a passage of the Grant-Davidowitz recording, as though it contained a clue that required pondering, but she knew that he had become preoccupied with her and had missed something.
        For both Eve and Miro, Bobby Dubois pretty much ceased to exist.
        In spite of his height and physical awkwardness, in spite of his colorful and ceaseless chatter, Dubois was of no more interest to either of them than were the bunker's plain concrete walls.
        When everything on the recording had been played and replayed, Miro went through some shuffle and live to the effect that he was unable to do anything about Grant for the time being, except wait: wait for him to surface; wait for the skies to clear so a satellite search could begin; wait for search teams already in the field to turn up something; wait for agents investigating other aspects of the case, in other cities, to get back to him.
        Then he asked Eve if she was free for dinner.
        She accepted the invitation with an uncharacteristic lack of coyness.
        She had a growing sense that what she responded to in the man was some secret power that he possessed, a strength that was mostly hidden and that could be glimpsed only in the self-confidence of his easy smile and in those blue-blue eyes that never revealed anything but amusement, as if this man expected always to have the last laugh.
        Although Miro had been assigned a car from the agency pool while he was in Vegas, he rode in her own Honda to a favorite restaurant of hers on Flamingo Road. Reflections of a sea of neon rolled in tidal patterns across low clouds and the night seemed filled with magic.
        She expected to get to know him better over dinner and a couple of glasses of wine-and to understand, by dessert, why he fascinated her.
        However, his skills as a conversationalist were equivalent to his looks: pleasant enough, but far from beguiling. Nothing that Miro said, nothing that he did, no gesture, no look brought Eve any closer to understanding the curious attraction that he held for her.
        By the time they left the restaurant and crossed the parking lot toward her car, she was frustrated and confused. She didn't know whether she should invite him back to her place or not. She didn't want sex with him.
        It wasn't that kind of attraction, exactly. Of course, some men revealed their truest selves when they had sex: by what they liked to do, by how they did it, by what they said and how they acted both during and after.
        But she didn't want to take him home, do it with him, get all sweaty, go the whole disgusting route, and still not understand what it was about him that so intrigued her.
        She was in a dilemma.
        Then, as they drew near to her car, with the cold wind soughing in a nearby row of palm trees and the air scented with the aroma of charcoalbroiled steaks from the restaurant, Roy Miro did the most unexpected and outrageous thing that Eve had ever seen in thirty-two years of outrageous experience.
        An immeasurable time after getting down from the Explorer and into the Range Rover-which could have been an hour or two minutes or thirty days and thirty nights, for all he knew-Spencer woke and saw a herd of tumbleweed pacing them. The shadows of mesquite and paddle-leaf cactus leaped through the headlights.
        He rolled his head to the left, against the back of the seat, and saw Valerie behind the wheel. "Hi."
        "Hi, there."
        "How'd you get here?"
        "That's too complicated for you right now."
        "I'm a complicated guy."
        "I don't doubt it."
        "Where we going?"
        "Away."
        "Good."
        "How're you feeling?"
        "Woozy."
        "Don't pee on the seat " she said with obvious amusement.
        He said, "I'll try not to."
        "Good.
        "Where's my dog?"
        "Who do you think's licking your ear?"
        "Oh. "He's right there behind you."
        "Hi, pal."
        "What's his name?" she asked.
        "Rocky."
        "You've got to be kidding."
        "About what?"
        "The