J. Robb - New York to Dallas

“I didn’t have anyone to talk to about it before. I hadn’t started training with Feeney, hadn’t met Mavis. I didn’t think I needed or wanted anyone to talk to about it. I think now, this time, if I didn’t, I might go a little crazy. I don’t know if I could take going back alone.”

“You’re not.” As he had at Central, he took her hand in both of his. “And never again alone.” This time with his eyes on hers, he brought her hand to his lips. “Take your hour. Go on, I’ll get your file bags.”

He knew, she thought, because he’d read about McQueen, that she needed time and understood why. She wasn’t sure what she’d done in her life to earn someone who understood her so well.

She stepped inside.

Then again, nothing came free.

Summerset stood in his stiff, funeral-black suit, his face stern as a headstone—and the fat cat, Galahad, squat at his feet.

“I find I can still be shocked,” he said. “You’re home nearly on time, and unbloodied.”

“Day’s not over. You know I thought I saw a dead man walking a couple hours ago. Did you have to go downtown for some eye of newt?”

He lifted his eyebrows. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. I prefer doing my shopping uptown.”

“Must’ve been another corpse.” She strode by him, opted to take the elevator down to the gym.

Thinking the lieutenant had looked quite impressive in her uniform, standing on Central’s wide steps, Summerset walked over to open the door for Roarke.

And lifted his eyebrows at the file bags. “I take it any celebratory dinner is on hold.”

“It is, yes. An old adversary come round again. It’s troubling,” Roarke said as he started upstairs with the cat trotting after him.

She ran three miles, hard, selecting an urban setting, so the program simulated the sound of her feet pounding on pavement, the buzz of traffic—street and air.

She set another program for weights and pumped until her muscles wept. When that wasn’t enough, she showered off the sweat in the bathroom attached to the expansive gym.

She’d do a couple dozen fast laps in the pool, she decided, and burn off the last of this ugly frustration and sick fear.

She didn’t bother with a bathing suit, but just grabbed a towel. More than the hour she’d asked for, she noted, but she wasn’t quite there yet.

When she stepped out into the tropical paradise of the pool area, wound through the trees, the flowers, she saw him sitting at a table. He’d changed into a T-shirt and casual pants. He had a bottle of wine, a couple of glasses—and worked with apparent enjoyment on his PPC.

Waiting for her, she thought. Wasn’t that a miracle? This amazing man would wait for her, would be there.

She hadn’t needed the three miles, she realized, or the weights or the laps. All she needed was Roarke.

“There you are.” He glanced up. “Better?”

“I took longer than I said. I got caught up.”

“No matter. I had a bit of work to finish up, and had a swim as well.”

“Oh. I was thinking you’d take one with me.”

“Well, I could, but I always enjoy watching you in the water, especially since you like to swim naked.”

“Pervert.” She walked to him. “Why don’t you come in? Unless watching’s all you’re up for.”

She let the towel drop.

“When you put it that way.”

Rather than diving in as was her habit, she walked down the steps, through the lagoon corner, ordering on the jets and blue lights as she slowly sank in.

“I was going to burn the rest off with some laps,” she said as Roarke shed his clothes. “But I figure you can do a better job of it. Maybe.”

“A challenge.” He joined her in the water. “Something else I’m always up for.”

She tipped her head back, shot her fingers in his hair, gripped it. “Prove it,” she said, and dragged his mouth to hers.

She wanted hot and hard, like the jets pulsing in the blue water. No tenderness, no gentle caress, but greedy and careless.

He knew, he always knew. She set her teeth on his shoulder as his hands took, rough and ready, whipping her to the place where there was no room for thoughts, for worries, for a world of the cruel.

His mouth, his mouth, scorching her skin, devouring her heart right through her breast while his hand shoved between her legs. The first orgasm ripped her as he dragged her under the water.

Breathless, blind, she sank into the pool, into him and the battering sea of sensation. Only to surface on a wild cry of release when he pulled her up again.

She wrapped around him, slick with water, hot with needs. Her hands and mouth were as busy as his, as demanding and urgent. The trouble he’d seen in her eyes, the sadness he’d sensed coiled in her dropped away. With them went his worry, went everything but this mad, almost brutal wanting.

Snared in it, he shoved her to the wall. His fingers dug into her hips as he plunged into her.

Breathless gasps muffled against his mouth. He wanted to swallow them, swallow her in deep, dark gulps. The water slapped and slithered, sluiced off skin faintly and eerily blue in the light.

“Take more.” Steeped in her. Drowning in her. “Take more.” Yes, she thought, yes. More. Gripping the edge, she wrapped her legs around his waist. Arching up, arching back, she took until her cries echoed around the garden. Took until there was nothing left.

He knew if it was left up to Eve they’d have the conversation and what passed for a meal in her home office. Another case, he decided, where she needed more. As summer refused to retire for the season, he arranged for the meal on one of the terraces where the gardens burst with color and scent.

There, with the air stubbornly holding the damp from the morning’s storm, tiny lights glimmered, candles flickered against the dark.

“I’ve got a lot of research to get to,” she began.

“Undoubtedly, and we’ll take all the time you need once I understand the situation, and you’ve got some food in you. Red meat.” He lifted the cover off a plate.

Eve eyed the steak. “Playing dirty.”

“Is there another way? We’ve a barrel of salt for your fries.”

She had to laugh. “Really dirty.” She took the wine he offered. “You know my weaknesses.”

“Every one.” And he hoped the pretty table, the pretty evening would help her through what she had to tell him. “I’ll wager you missed lunch.”

She sipped, sat. “I had to hack away at paperwork all morning, and kept thinking if I just had a body, I could skate out of it. It’s that careful what you wish for bit. Sucks that it’s usually true.”

She told him about Tray and Julie, then of the prison administration dragging their feet on notification of McQueen’s escape. Bookending the worst of it, she supposed. Building up to going back.

“He wants your attention.”

“And he’s got it. He’ll keep it until he’s back in a cage. He should’ve been transferred to an off-planet facility six years ago when Omega was complete. But . . .”

She shrugged, continued to eat.

“They never charged him with the murders. His mother, the girls never recovered, the other women?”

“No. Not enough evidence, especially if you’re a PA more concerned with your conviction rate than actual justice.”

“You were disappointed,” Roarke commented.

“I was green.” She shrugged again, but with more of a jerk. “I figured we had enough solid circumstantial on the four missing girls, on the dead mother, partners. We had enough to try him on those charges, too. But that wasn’t my decision. That’s not my job.”

“You’re still disappointed.”