New York to Dallas

until about three years ago. The prints and DNA on record are bogus as they belong to a ten-year-old corpse named Jenny Pike. We’re running face recognition on her to see if we can match her in our system.”
    “She’ll be in Dallas, with McQueen.”
    “Maybe. Or he may have disposed of her by now.”
    No, no, Eve thought. Catch up, catch on. “He still needs her. He hasn’t had time to hunt up a new partner. She’s with him. Her ID as Sister Suzan went in the system before she met McQueen, so that’s on her. He’s got himself a player this time around. My partner’s working Stibble, who set them up together. If he knows anything, she’ll get it out of him. We’re going to land in a minute. We’ll continue this at Lieutenant Ricchio’s house.”
    Eve clicked off, looked at Roarke. “Crap.”
    “Because the FBI adds another factor?”
    “Because I didn’t think to inform them. It didn’t cross my mind, and it should have. I promised full disclosure and cooperation.”
    “If they’re that close behind us, they got their disclosure quickly enough.”
    “It should’ve come from me.” Shoving a hand through her hair she went back to pacing. “Now I’m going to have to apologize. I hate that. And yeah, there’s the other factor. Ricchio’s not only swallowing a New York cop in his business, but the feds. In his place I’d be feeling a little put out.”
    “You’ve got an hour’s jump to convince him not to be put out with you. The FBI will have to handle their own diplomacy.”
    She considered. “There is that.”
    Roarke snagged her hand on her next pass, tugged her into her seat. “Strap in, Lieutenant.” Reaching across, he buckled her in himself. “This is what you do.” He took her face in his hand, kept his eyes on hers as he knew she hated landing as much as takeoff. “Where you do it is only one aspect.”
    “It’s a pretty big one.”
    “You know your target and your objective. Those are bigger. And you know yourself.” He kissed her to settle himself as much as her. Because the shuttle glided in, touched down.
    And they were in Dallas.
     
     
    The minute she stepped off the shuttle, she frowned at the vehicle Roarke had waiting.
    Amused, he opened the passenger door for her. “I thought something discreet, without flash, would be most appropriate.”
    “Just because it’s not a solid gold, open-air zippy toy doesn’t mean it’s discreet. It looks like money. Whole big bunches of money.”
    “It’s a quietly styled sedan with all-terrain capabilities because you don’t know where you’ll have to go, do you now? And it’s black.” He got behind the wheel, gave the on-board computer the location of the station house. “In any case, a solid gold vehicle would weigh entirely too much. A nice gold veneer now, that might be appealing.”
    “Trust you,” she muttered.
    “You can, yes.”
    He drove out of the station and straight into Dallas traffic.
    She remembered this, from her previous return there. The thick traffic, the roads and streets that curled or angled off rather than forming a reasonable grid. And the buildings, she thought now—not like New York where old mixed with new, where brownstones spread and sleek towers climbed. But spears and towers, arches and wedges, all flashy to her mind.
    Like a solid gold zippy toy.
    She focused on them, on her instinctive dislike of the skyline, and refused to think about what had happened in a freezing room in a run-down hotel in the city’s hard-edged sex district.
    “It doesn’t look the same, really, as it did when we were here. Not even two years ago.”
    Roarke gestured to one of the many towering cranes. “Something’s always coming down and going up. It’s a city in perpetual evolution.”
    “Maybe that’s good.” She shifted in her seat. “Good it doesn’t stay the same. Maybe I won’t feel anything. It’s like coming to an anonymous city. It’s more off-planet than on to me anyway. Any city, anywhere. It’s nothing to me.”
    If it was, he thought, she wouldn’t feel the need to convince herself.
    “We’ve got a visitor’s slot.” She read off a text. “Level Three East, Slot Twenty-two. That’s the same level as SVU.”
    “Convenient.”
    “They’re being polite. They could’ve given us a slot on the other side of the building. So this is a good sign. I’ve got to persuade Ricchio to let me take the lead. He doesn’t know McQueen, he’s got no reason to. He’ll have done his