Someone who knew him. Someone he’d let in the apartment, let into the bedroom while he packed for his business trip.
Client. Coworker. Blackmail mark. Lover.
Would he have been confident or arrogant enough to let a mark or a seriously pissed-off client, lover, associate into the bedroom?
She suspected not, but it wouldn’t hurt to get an expert opinion.
Add a quick session with Mira to the list.
“Lights on, twenty percent,” Roarke said, looking over into her eyes. “You might as well have some light since you’re thinking so loud.”
“I was thinking very quietly. You have bat ears.”
“When it comes to you, apparently.”
She pushed up to sit. “What’re you working on? I can take an interest,” she added when he cocked an eyebrow. “At . . . shit, five-thirty-eight in the morning.”
“Actually, you might be interested. We’ve made a few changes to the design of An Didean, and have added a memorial roof garden.”
The old building in Hell’s Kitchen, she thought, he’d bought with the plan to rehab and turn it into a safe house for troubled kids. And where the bones of twelve young girls had been discovered behind the walls.
“That’s nice.”
“We’ll have a dome so it can be used year-round, and those we house there can learn something of horticulture. The architect’s wondering if we should use stones or benches with the names of the girls who died there.”
Eve rose, saying nothing as she crossed to the AutoChef for coffee. The cat deserted Roarke to sprint over to her, winding slyly between her legs, ever hopeful, she knew, that food was involved.
“I think, I guess you’re asking what I think.”
“I am,” he told her.
“I think creating a garden shows respect. And I think the kids you’d shelter there, educate there, don’t need to be reminded of cruelty and death, but of life. Of the, well, garden of possibilities of life.”
“I think you’re exactly right. Thank you.”
“Anytime. I’m going to grab thirty in the gym before I get ready.”
Coffee in hand, she took the elevator down, got in a good run along a simulated shoreline with blue waves breaking.
After a blistering hot shower with the multi-jets on full, she stepped into the drying tube.
“It’s too bad the rest of the world can’t be heated up like a shower,” she commented as she headed for her closet.
“Since it can’t you’ll want to dress for it. Not as windy today, though, according to the questionably reliable forecast.”
She grabbed a sweater she knew to be warm despite being thin and soft as a tissue, straight-legged pants and a vest that would add warmth and cover her weapon harness.
After pulling on clothes, she grabbed a pair of boots.
“Not those boots,” Roarke said with barely a glance when she came out to sit and pull them on.
“What’s wrong with these boots?”
“Not a thing, but the gray with the mock laces will pick up the color of that sweater, polish things off.”
“I don’t need to polish . . . Fine, fine, fine.” Easier, she figured, to change the damn boots than get into a fashion debate she’d certainly lose.
Plus she wanted to see what was under the silver domes on the table. If she changed the boots, maybe it wouldn’t be oatmeal.