Remember When

authors, and convince her to accept security. I believe you recommended private security in this matter, Lieutenant."
    "I did." Eve nodded. "It's a good idea. If he's providing it," she told Samantha, "you'll have the best."
    "I didn't take any convincing. I want to live a long and happy life, and I'll take whatever help I can get to make sure of it. Do you want coffee? Anything?"
    "It's real coffee?"
    "She has a weakness." Roarke smiled. "She married me for the coffee."
    Some of the bloom came back into Samantha's cheeks. "I could write a hell of a book about the two of you. Glamour, sex, murder, the cop and the gazillionaire."
    "No," they said together, and Roarke laughed.
    "I don't think so. I'll deal with the coffee, Samantha. Why don't you sit down? You're tired."
    "And it shows." Samantha sat, sighed and let Roarke go into the kitchen area for more coffee and cups. "I can't sleep. I can work. I can put my head into the work, but when I stop, I can't sleep. I want to be home, and I can't stand the thought of being home. I'm tired of myself. I'm alive, I'm well and whole, and others aren't, and I keep spiraling into self-pity anyway."
    "You should give yourself a break.".
    "Dallas is right," Peabody put in. "You were up and running a couple of weeks, come home to something that would put a lot of people under. You've been hit with everything all at once. A little self-pity doesn't hurt. You should take a tranq and check out for eight or ten hours."
    "I hate tranqs."
    "There you take hands with the lieutenant." Roarke came in with a tray. "She won't take them voluntarily either." He set the coffee down. "Do you want me out of your way?"
    Eve studied him. "You're not in it yet. I'll let you know when you are."
    "You never fail."
    "Samantha, why did you leave out Alex Crew's family connections in your book?"
    "Connections?" Samantha leaned forward for her coffee and, Eve noted, avoided eye contact.
    "Specifically Crew's ex-wife and son. You give considerable details regarding Myers's family and what they dealt with after his death. You speak at great length of William Young and your own family. And though you feature Crew prominently, there's no mention of a wife or a child."
    "How do you know he had a wife and child?"
    "I'm asking the questions. You didn't miss those details in your research. Why aren't they in the book?"
    "You put me in a difficult position." Samantha held the coffee, stirring, stirring, long after the minute sprinkle of sugar she'd added would have dissolved. "I made a promise. I couldn't and wouldn't have written the book without my family's blessing. Most specifically without my grandparents' permission. And I promised them I'd leave Crew's son out of it."
    As if realizing what her hand was doing, she tapped the spoon on the rim of her cup, then set it aside. "He was only a little boy when this happened. My grandmother felt-still feels-that his mother was trying to protect him from Crew. Hide him from Crew."
    "Why did she think that?"
    After setting her untasted coffee down, Samantha dragged her fingers through her hair. "I'm not free to talk about it. I swore I wouldn't write about it, or talk about it in interviews. No." She held up her hands before Eve could speak. "I know what you're going to say, and you're absolutely right. These are not ordinary circumstances. This is murder."
    "Then answer the question."
    "I need to make a call. I need to speak with my grandmother, which is going to start another round of demands, debates and worry with her and my grandfather. Another reason I'm not sleeping."
    She pressed her fingers to her eyes before dropping them into her lap. "They want me to come to Maryland, stay with them, or they threaten to descend on me here. It's tough going to keep them from calling my parents and sibs. I'm holding them off, and I'm gratefully accepting Roarke's offer for security on them until this is resolved. Until it is, I'm staying here. I think it's important that I see this through, that I deal in my way with what's happening now just as they did in theirs with what happened then."
    "Part of dealing is giving the primary any and all data that may pertain to this investigation."
    "Yes, you're right again. Just let me call, speak to her first. We don't break promises in my family. It's like a religion to my grandmother. I'll go in the bedroom, call her now, if you can just wait a few minutes."
    "Go ahead."
    "Admirable," Roarke said when she'd gone. "To set such store