In Death 16 - Portrait in Death

finger."
     
     
"There was a time." Roarke fisted his hand, imagined the satisfaction of pummelling it, again and again, into Grogin's face. "Not worth it, as I said. He was nothing but Patrick Roarke's pet cur. Still, he'll wonder for a while, a long while, if I might come back and do more. And that'll keep him cold at night."
     
     
"You knew already most of what he told you."
     
     
"I had to hear it said." It was cooler in Dublin than in New York. And he could see the river. The River Liffey, with its lovely bridges shining in the summer sun. The river where they'd tossed the broken shell of her. "I had to see it, how it was, before I can go on to the next."
     
     
"What's the next?"
     
     
"She had family. They're in Clare. They need to be told what happened to her, and why. Oh, Christ, Brian. I need to go and tell them, but I need a night's drunk first."
     
     
"You've come to the right place." Brian draped an arm over Roarke's shoulder, steered him away from the river. "You'll come home and stay with me tonight."
     
     
Chapter 15
     
     
It was probably cowardice, but Eve wasn't going to worry about it.
     
     
"We need to sort through all these interviews, coordinate the time lines, run these names." She checked her wrist unit as if concerned with the time. "We're coming up on end of shift. I'll run you by your place so you can pick up what you need. It'll be easier to work out of my home office, and bring the rest of the team in there in the morning."
     
     
"You want me to spend the night at your place?"
     
     
"It'll be easier."
     
     
"Uh-huh." Peabody folded her hands neatly in her lap while Eve drove out of Columbia's parking port. "One of the things I need to pick up is McNab."
     
     
"Fine."
     
     
"Fine," Peabody echoed, pressing her lips together to hold back a grin. "So that means both of us will be bunking at your place."
     
     
Eve stared straight ahead. "We need to put in some time on this, so it'll be easier this way."
     
     
"And you'll have a Summerset buffer."
     
     
"What's your point?"
     
     
"You have less trouble with the idea of me and McNab bouncing on the gel bed in the guest room than you do with dealing one-on-one with Summerset. It's kind of sweet."
     
     
"Don't make me stop this vehicle, Peabody."
     
     
"Did you have a chance to ask Roarke if he's got any apartments up for grabs?"
     
     
"No. He's been busy. He's got stuff on his mind."
     
     
Peabody sobered. "So I gathered. Dallas, is he in trouble?"
     
     
"Yeah. It's a big mess, personal mess. He's working it out. It's a family thing."
     
     
"I didn't think he had any family."
     
     
"Neither did he." She couldn't talk about it. Didn't know how to talk about it. Didn't know if she was supposed to talk about it. "He'll work it out. He'll be back in a couple of days."
     
     
Meanwhile you're off, Peabody thought, because he's off. "McNab and I can hang at your place until he's back if you want."
     
     
"Let's take it a day at a time."
     
     
She didn't complain about waiting while Peabody packed a bag. Instead, she sat in her vehicle and began streamlining her notes into a report. She didn't complain about swinging by Central to pick up McNab. Anything was better than going home alone.
     
     
So it had come to that, she thought, tuning out the chatter Peabody and McNab insisted on making. She didn't want to go home alone. A couple of years before she'd have thought nothing of it. In fact, she'd have preferred it. Closing herself into her own space and spending the bulk of any evening on her caseload.
     
     
Of course, she hadn't had Summerset hovering around somewhere. Broken leg or not, he was still in the house. Still breathing the same air as she was.
     
     
But that wasn't the whole reason she was dragging Peabody and McNab home with her. She wanted the company, the noise, the distraction. Something, anything, to keep her mind focused on the work so she'd stop worrying about Roarke for a while.
     
     
Where the hell was he now, and what was he doing?
     
     
Deliberately, she blocked that train of thought and tuned back in to the conversation.
     
     
"Crimson Rocket is totally juiced," McNab claimed. "They're completely iced."
     
     
"Oh please. They blow."
     
     
"You don't jive with rocking tunes, She-Body. Catch this."
     
     
He turned on his pocket player and had something screaming out. It sounded, to Eve's ear, like a train wreck. "Off!" she ordered. "Turn that shit