New York to Dallas

gave me eight hours and it’s ticking away fast. Send me whatever you get out of Stibble, whatever you get on the partner.”
    “I’ll stay in regular contact.” With some reluctance Peabody moved away from the door, followed Eve out. “How do you want me to play Stibble? Should I—”
    “You know what to do. Do it. Now brief the men.” Without another word she left.
    She pulled out her ’link, tagged Baxter as she worked down the levels to the garage.
    “Yo,” Baxter said.
    “I’m headed out of town, following a lead on McQueen. Peabody’s taking over here. I want you and Trueheart working with her. She’s primary.”
    “Copy that.”
    “Don’t give her too much grief, Baxter, but don’t baby her.”
    “How much is too much? Don’t worry about it. Trueheart’ll keep me honest. Just go get that fucker, LT.”
    “That’s the plan.” She clicked off, contacted Roarke’s office.
    His admin, Caro, smiled at her. “Hello, Lieutenant. Roarke’s just finishing up a holo-conference. If it’s important, I’ll cut in.”
    “I’m on my way there. I need to talk to him as soon as possible. It’s urgent.”
    Caro’s smile shifted to alert. “I’ll clear the time.”
    “Thanks.”
    And here we go, Eve thought, as she jumped into her vehicle and pushed the DLE Urban Roarke had designed for her to full speed. As she drove, dodging, weaving, hitting vertical to leapfrog, she plugged the disc Whitney had given her into the onboard comp, and began to familiarize herself with Lieutenant Ricchio and his unit.
    When she stepped into the expansive black-and-white lobby of Roarke’s headquarters, one of his security met her. “We cleared an elevator for you. Straight up, Lieutenant.”
    “Thanks.” She strode quickly past the moving maps, the banks and rivers of flowers, the crisscross of people bustling in and out of the shops and eateries.
    Security escorted her to the elevator, then stepped back. “It’s programmed,” he told her before the doors closed.
    She spent the time on the fast ride up, up, up, pacing the car, aligning her thoughts, working out what needed to be done and how to do it.
    The doors opened again, directly into Roarke’s office, and he stood waiting.
    “What’s happened?”
    “McQueen’s taken a hostage.” When he gripped her hand, she saw her mistake. He thought it was someone in New York, someone they loved.
    “Who?”
    “Melinda Jones. She’s one of the twins, the last he abducted.”
    “I remember.” But relief didn’t register on his face. He remembered, she thought, everything. “She’s in Dallas.”
    “He grabbed her late last night. I can fill you in on it later. He’s given me a deadline to get down there, or he’ll start cutting pieces off of her.”
    “He wants you in Dallas?” Those beautiful blue eyes narrowed and sharpened. “He specifically demanded this?”
    “Yeah, in eight hours from the time the sister picked up the message. “That was at ten forty-three, their time. It’s twelve-forty now. So I’ve got six hours to get there. Or . . . it’s earlier there, so I lose an hour. Or gain it. Shit, I can’t ever figure that crap out.”
    “There’s time enough. It isn’t a coincidence he’s there.”
    “There are factors. We can get into them later. Right now I don’t want to fuck around, give him any excuse to start cutting her up. I’m cleared to work with the locals, and to take a partner or aide, or whatever. I need Peabody to stay here, to run this part of the investigation.”
    He nodded, and saying nothing more crossed the long space to his desk in front of the sea of glass that gave him New York. “Caro, clear my schedule until further notice. I need a shuttle prepped and waiting at Transportation for a flight to Dallas, Texas. Right away.”
    He clicked off the inter-office ’link. “Sit down a minute,” he told Eve.
    “I didn’t ask you to go with me. I was going to, but you didn’t give me a chance.”
    “Do you think you could go there without me? Ever?”
    She closed her eyes a minute. “No questions? No objections? No ‘You can’t go back there’?”
    “I’d be wasting my time and yours. Going will hurt you. Not going would break you.”
    This time when she let out a breath, it shuddered. And she went to him, wrapped her arms around him. “Yes. And going back without you? I don’t want to think about it.”
    “Then don’t.” He drew her back, looked into her eyes. “We’ll deal with this, you