J. Robb: Loyalty in Death

But he couldn't get her face out of his mind. The sheer beauty of it. The sad eyes, the soft voice, the quiet dignity. He told himself it was a foolish, even childish crush. Horribly inappropriate. But he had no choice but to admit here, in private, where honesty was most valued, that she was one of the primary reasons he'd taken the commission and made the trip east.

He wanted to see her again, no matter how that wanting shamed him.

Still, he wasn't a child who believed he could have whatever he needed.

It would be good for him to see her here, in her own home, with her husband. He liked to think it was the circumstances of how they'd met, of where they'd met, that had caused this infatuation. She'd been alone, so obviously lonely, and had looked so delicate, so cool and golden in the deep desert heat.

It would be different here because she would be different here. And so would he. He would do the job she had asked him to do and nothing more. He would spend time with the sister he had missed so deeply it sometimes made his heart ache. And he would see, at long last, the city and the work that had pulled her away from her family.

The city, he could already admit, fascinated him.

As he toweled off, he tried to see through the tiny, steam-misted window. Even that blurry, narrow view made his blood pump just a little faster.

There was so much of it, he thought now. Not the open vastness of desert and mountain and field he'd grown used to since his family had relocated in Arizona a few years before. But so much of everything rammed and jammed into one small space.

There was so much he wanted to see. So much he wanted to do. As he hitched on a fresh shirt and jeans, he began to speculate, to plot, and to plan. When he stepped back out into the living area, he was eager to begin.

He saw his sister busily tidying and grinned. "You make me feel like company."

"Well…" She'd tucked away every murder and mayhem disc and file she could find. It would have to do. She glanced over, blinked.

Wow, was all she could think. Why hadn't she noticed in her first rush of delight in seeing him? Her baby brother had grown up. And he was a genuine eye treat. "You look good – sort of filled out and everything."

"It's just a clean shirt."

"Right. Do you want some juice, some tea?"

"Ah… I really want to go out. I've got this whole guidebook thing. I studied it on the way east. You know how many museums there are in Manhattan alone?"

"No, but I bet you do." Inside her regulation shoes, Peabody's toes curled and flexed. Her feet, she decided, were about to get a workout. "Let me change, and we'll check them out."

An hour later, she was almost tearfully grateful for the airsoles, for the thick soft wool of her slacks, and the lining of her winter coat. It wasn't just museums Zeke was after. It was everything.

He took videos with the palm unit he told her he'd splurged on for the trip. It would have been ripped off a dozen times if she hadn't kept her eyes peeled for street thieves. No matter how often she lectured him to watch himself, to recognize the signs and the moves, he just smiled and nodded.

They rode to the top of the Empire State Building, stood in the freezing, bitter wind until the tips of her ears went numb. And his pale gray eyes glowed with the wonder of it. They toured the Met, gawked at the storefronts along Fifth, stared up at the tourist blimps, bumped along the sky glides, and gnawed on stale pretzels he'd insisted on buying from a glide-cart.

Only deep and abiding love could have convinced her to agree to skidding over the ice rink at Rockefeller Center when her calf muscles were already weeping from three hours of urban hiking.

But he made her remember what it was to be stunned by the city, to see all it had to offer. She realized, watching him be awed, time after time, that she'd forgotten to look.

And if she had to flash the badge she'd tucked in her coat pocket at a gimlet-eyed grifter looking to score the tourist, it didn't spoil the day.

Still, by the time she finally talked him into stopping for a hot drink and a bite to eat, she'd decided it was imperative she outline some very specific do's and don'ts. He was going to be on his own a great deal when he wasn't working, she thought. He might have been twenty-three, but he had all the naive trust in his fellow man of a sheltered five-year-old.

"Zeke." She warmed her hands on a bowl of lentil soup and tried not to think about the soy-beef burger she'd spied on the menu. "We should talk about what you're going to do while I'm working."

"I'll be building cabinets."

"Yeah, but my hours are…" She gestured vaguely. "You never know. You'll be spending a lot of time on your own, so – "

"You don't have to worry about me." He grinned at her, spooned up his own soup. "I've been off the farm before."

"You've never been here before."

He sat back, shot her the exasperated look brothers reserve for nagging sisters. "I carry my money in my front pocket. I don't talk to the people who cart around those cases full of wrist units and PPCs, and I don't move in to play that card game like the one they had going on Fifth Avenue, even though it looks like fun."

"It's a con. You can't win."

"Still looked like fun." But he wouldn't brood on it, not when she had that line dug between her eyebrows. "I don't strike up conversations on the subway."

"Not with a chemi-head looking to score." She rolled her eyes. "Jesus, Zeke, the guy was practically foaming at the mouth. Anyhow." She waved that away. "I don't expect you to lock yourself into the apartment on your free time. I just want you to be careful. It's a great city, but it eats people every day. I don't want one of them to be you."

"I'll be careful."

"And you'll stick to the major tourist areas, carry your palm-link?"

"Yes, Mom." He grinned at her again, and looked so young Peabody's heart stuttered. "So, you up for the Fly Over Manhattan tour?"

"Sure." She managed to smile instead of wince. "You bet. Soon as we're done here." She took her time with the soup. "When are you supposed to get started on this job?"

"Tomorrow. We set it all up before I left. They approved the plans, the estimates. They paid for my transpo and expenses."

"You said they saw your work when they were out in Arizona on vacation?"

"She did." And just thinking of it had his pulse running a little faster. "She bought one of the carvings I'd done for Camelback Cooperative Artworks. Then she and Silvie – I don't think you ever met Silvie, she's a glass artist. She was running the co-op that day and she mentioned how I'd designed and built the cabinets and counters and the displays. And then Mrs. Branson mentioned how she and her husband were looking for a carpenter, and – "

"What?" Peabody's head snapped up.

"They were looking for a carpenter, and – "

"No, what was that name?" She grabbed his hand, clamped down. "Did you say Branson?"

"That's right. The Bransons hired me. Mr. and Mrs. B. Donald Branson. He owns Branson T and T. Good tools."

"Oh." Peabody set down her spoon. "Oh, shit, Zeke."

– =O=-***-=O=-

Fixer's was a grungy smear in an area not known for its tidiness. Just off Ninth, a bare block from the entrance to the tunnel, Fixer's was a dilapidated storefront mined with security bars, patched with intercoms and peek lenses, and as welcoming as a cockroach.

The one-way windows offered the passerby a dingy field of black. The door was reinforced steel, studded with a complicated series of locks that made the police seal look like a joke.

People who loitered in the area knew how to mind their own business – which was usually second-story work. One glance at Eve had most of them finding something else to do and somewhere else to do it.