“Around two, fuzz
y-brain.”
“Sorry. Sorry.”
“It happens I got caught up myself, and the work took longer than I’d anticipated. I just surfaced myself.”
“Oh.” She yawned. “Maybe I should be carrying you.”
“Easy to say now that I’m hauling you into the bedroom.” Crossing it, he dumped her unceremoniously on the bed. “And I doubt either of us have the energy for a sexy new nightgown.”
She managed to pull off a boot, toss it. “I don’t know. I could fuel up if you put one on.”
“Aren’t you the funny one when you’re asleep on your feet?”
She tossed the second boot. “I’m not on my feet.” She dragged off her shirt, wriggled out of her pants. Then crawled up the bed. “Screw nightgowns,” she muttered, then snuggled down in her underwear.
When Roarke slipped in beside her, she was already asleep again.
In the dream, Coltraine circled Eve’s murder board. She wore a pale blue sweater and trimly tailored pants, and her weapon at her hip.
“I worked murder cases a couple of times,” she said. “Not as primary, but part of a team. A break-in or mugging gone bad, that kind of thing. It always depressed me. I can’t say I ever thought someone would be working my murder.”
“Who does?”
Coltraine smiled over at Eve. “Good point. You know more about me now than you did when you started.”
“That’s usually the way it works.”
“Some of it you’re getting through Li’s eyes. You can’t trust that a hundred percent.”
“No, but he won’t lie.”
“No, he won’t.” Coltraine moved over to where Eve sat at her desk, then leaned a hip on it. “I used to think you had to be cold to be a murder cop. Cold enough to walk in death every day, or nearly every day. To pick through lives, uncover all the secrets of people who couldn’t hide them anymore. But I was wrong. You have to be able to control the heat, but there has to be heat. Otherwise, you wouldn’t give a damn, not really. You wouldn’t care enough to do what you have to do to chase murder.”
“Sometimes it takes the cold.”
“Maybe. I know more about you now, too, seeing as you’ve got me stuck in your head. You struggle with the law, because you have such intense and marrow-deep respect for it. Such strong belief. But it’s the victim who pulls you, the victim who might have you question that line of law. More even than justice, and justice is your faith.”
“This isn’t about me.”
“You know it is. We’re as intimate as lovers now. Cop/victim. I’m one of the faces in your head now, in your dreams. You never forget them, no matter how many there are. That’s your burden, and your gift. You let Li in, when the rules and regs come down against that. He’s too close. But you’ve blurred the rules and regs because he’s a victim, too. And he needed it. It’s the cold part of you that’s questioning that now, in the back of your mind. And it’s the heat that knows it’s right.”
“Which part of you walked away from Alex Ricker?”
“That’s a question, isn’t it?” Coltraine rose, bent down to stroke Galahad as he bumped against her leg. “Nice cat.”
“How about an answer?”
“You’re wondering if I walked because he didn’t love me enough to pull back from that line. To show me how much I mattered. Or if I walked because I remembered I was a cop, and I had a duty to that line of the law.”
“It doesn’t matter.” Eve shrugged. “You walked, and that’s what plays here.”
“It matters to you, because of Li. It matters because of the badge. And it matters because you wonder what you would’ve done, if Roarke hadn’t shown you how much you mattered.”
“Not altogether. One and two, that’s true. But the last? He shows me every day. I think I get how much you hurt when Alex didn’t, because I don’t have to wonder. I know. And I don’t think it was the cop who walked. I think the cop came after. I think, maybe, you were a better cop once you came here.”
“That’s nice. Thanks. Still, I wasn’t a good enough cop to keep myself from being taken out with my own damn weapon.”