She frowned down at it. “It’s gray.”
“With a green undertone.”
She shrugged, took the jacket from him, then deliberately grabbed brown boots.
“You’d be breaking my heart if I didn’t know you’re winding me up.”
“Serve you right if I wore them anyway.” She switched them for black.
“I need to go deal with the schedule changes, which will likely have Caro set her hair—or maybe mine—on fire.”
Eve sat to pull on the boots, imagined Roarke’s steady-as-a-rock admin would handle it all, without flames. “I’ll see you when we’re both back.”
“Meanwhile, take care of my cop.” He bent over to kiss her.
“I will if you take care of my traveling gazillionaire.”
“That’s a deal.”
Alone, she strapped on her weapon, filled her pockets. She gave Galahad a quick scratch and rub—no point holding grudges—then jogged downstairs.
Coat, scarf, snowflake cap, then out into the cold where her car sat, engine and heater already running thanks to the man who thought of everything.
And, thanks to the cat, she ran thirty ahead of schedule. No ad blimps blasting yet, she noted, and traffic at the edge of insane rather than fully over the line.
Some commuter trams, overhead and
on the street, carted the night shift one way, the early shift another.
Eve used her wrist unit, dictated a text to Peabody.
Skip the morgue, go straight to Central. Get me a consult with Mira, and clear the way for us to go through the vic’s apartment.
More time saved, she thought as she played weave and dodge on her route downtown. Time she’d spend getting that subscription list for the vid palace, running down the names.
Somebody knew you, Chanel, knew a lot about you, Eve thought. Coworkers aren’t ringing so far. Exes aren’t ringing.
A neighbor maybe, somebody who belonged to the same gym, or shopped at the same market.
A friendly woman, everybody said. A happy one. Friendly and happy tend to talk to people.
Neighbors, she thought again. Markets, a gym if she used one, bank, beauty salon. And the vid palace.
Somebody you see regularly, but more important, who sees you.
Before you know it, you’ve got a target on your back.
Or on the base of your skull.
Those angles played in her head all the way downtown.
When she walked through the white tunnel of the morgue, her boot steps echoed. She heard muted voices behind a set of doors, smelled bad coffee, something fried. Hash brown cake, she decided, which somehow managed to be both disgusting and delicious.
She stepped into Morris’s theater and a chorus of voices singing about … making the match.
“Early and bright,” Morris commented, turning the music down to a murmur.
He stood beside Rylan’s body in a navy suit with thread-like stripes of maroon. His shirt matched the stripes and the tie played both colors together in a pattern she thought they called—for whatever reason—paisley. He’d braided his long, dark hair, then twined it with maroon cord.