Born In Death

“Which might put a man off the idea of marriage or family.”

“Might. Reporters have a lot of sources. If he’d wanted to find Tandy, it seems he could and would have. Maybe he decided he wanted the kid, and they’re just off playing kissy-face. Or maybe he found out she was having it when he thought she wasn’t, and he came over pissed. Or he’s just at home, sleeping off a Saturday Night Special and not answering his ’link.”

“Or, it’s still possible she just walked away. She’d done it before, leaving London.”

“Yeah, there’s that.” And the probability run she’d done on that angle had given her a near fifty-fifty. “But I’m betting when she left London, she packed her things, all nice and neat. She gave her landlord and her employer notice. I already know she did none of those things here. No, she didn’t work all day, leave the shop, and decide somewhere between Madison and Fifth to just keep walking.”

“No.” Roarke laid a hand on Eve’s shoulder and rubbed. “She didn’t.”

“So.” She struggled with a yawn. “You getting anywhere with the numbers?”

“A couple of interesting things. I want to come at them from another angle, then I’ll put it together for you.”

“Sounds like a plan. Look, why don’t you pack it in for now, go on to bed? I’ll just wait for the Italian, then head in, too.”

“Not a chance. If I leave you on your own, I’ll come back in a few hours and find you facedown at your desk, snoring.”

“I don’t snore.”

“Wake the dead.”

“I do not.” Did she?

He only smiled, then wandered off to study the Willowby side of the board. “You’ve gathered quite a bit in a short amount of time.”

“Nothing that points to where she is and why. In the Italian case, they never found the woman, or the kid.”

“They didn’t have you.” Nor had his mother, he thought. She’d had no one, and there was nothing that could change it. He turned to Eve. “Look at you. You’re ru

“It may already be too late for her.” She nodded at Tandy’s photo. “Pushing’s all I can do.”

When her ’link signaled, she spun around to answer. “Dallas.”

“Triveti. I am returning to you.”

His accent was thick and exotic, his face lean and handsome. “Thank you for getting back to me so quickly, Inspector.”

“I am pleased. My English, scuzi, it is small.”

“My Italian’s smaller.” She glanced toward Roarke. “I have someone with me who can help if we get in a bind. You investigated a Missing Persons case a couple years ago. A pregnant woman.”

“Sophia Belego. You have the same.”

“Tandy Willowby,” she told him, and gave him the bones of the case, with Roarke refining some of the details in Italian when the Inspector expressed confusion.

“Like yours, my Sophia, she had no close family, no ties to the city where she disappeared in. She left her – momento – her, ah banking account. It had not been used, or her credit cards, since the time of her disappearing. Her clothes, her possessions remained in her apartment. In this place, her neighbor speaks to her that morning when she is leaving. The statement says that Sophia was – what is lieto?”

“Happy,” Roarke translated.

“Si, she is happy and full of excite. She is going to see her dottore.”

“Doctor,” Roarke translated.

“And she will shop for the baby. She sees the dottore, and is well. Healthy. Her spirits are good, and she makes the appuntamento?”

“Appointment.”

“Appointment,” Triveti repeated, “in one week. She is very great with child, you see?”

“Yes,” Eve told him.

“But she does not shop for the baby, not in Rome. I am talking to everyone in these places. Some, they know her from other times, but not from that day. She is not seen after she leaves the dottore. There is none of her at transportation – bus, train, shuttle. There is no use of her passport, and I find it in her apartment. There are no messages, no communications that take me to leads.”

“Nothing in the hospitals, the birthing centers, the morgues?”

“Nothing. I look for the father of the child, but no one knows. Not in Rome, not in Florence. In all our efforts, she is not found.”

Using Roarke, Eve took Triveti through the steps again, squeezed out a few more details. She requested a copy of his file, and agreed to reciprocate with hers.

After, she sat frowning at the notes she’d taken. “I need to write all this up.”

“Sleep first.”

“I told the LT in MPU that I’d copy her all reports and notes. I need to – ”

“You think she’s sitting by her comp waiting for your report at…” he glanced at his wrist unit, “…four forty-eight on bloody Sunday morning.”

“No, but – ”

“Don’t make me haul your ass up and drag you to bed. I’m tired, and I might rap your head against the wall on the way. I’d hate to damage the paint.”

“Ha-ha. Okay, okay. Just let me try Applebee one more time. Listen, listen, if she’s gone off to see him, I can go to bed with a clear head.”

“You know damn well she hasn’t. One more, and that’s the end of it.”

“You get bitchy when you’re tired.”

“I get bitchier yet when I watch you run yourself into the ground.”

She tried Aaron again, and again got voice mail. “Damn it.”

“Bed. Sleep. Or being in a bitchy frame of mind, I might hold you down and pour a tranq into you.”

“You and what army?” She got to her feet, and the ensuing head rush told her he was right. She needed to put the circuits on pause for a few hours.

Two hours, she thought, three tops. And she glanced back at Tandy’s picture on her board as she walked out with Roarke.

“It’s harder than homicides,” she stated.

“Is it?”

“They’re already gone. You’re there to find who took their life, to find out why if you can, to build a case that will give the dead justice. But this, you just don’t know. Is she alive, dead, hurt, trapped, or did she just say screw it and walk? If she’s alive and in trouble, you can’t know how much time you have to find her. And if you don’t, not in time, she may end up being yours again, as a homicide.”

“We’re going to find her.”

Eve glanced at the bedroom clock. Seventy-one hours missing, she thought.

15

EVE CAME OUT OF THE BLANK BLACK OF EXHAUSTED sleep into a bright flash of white. There were babies crying, women screaming, and though they seemed to be all around her, she was alone in the white box. She pushed at the walls, but they were strong as steel, and all she managed was to smear bloody handprints against the white.

Looking down, she saw that her hands were covered with fresh blood.

Whose blood? she wondered, and reached for her weapon. But in her harness was only a small knife, already gorey. She recognized it – of course she did. She’d used that very knife to hack her father to death once upon a time.

If it was good enough for him, it would be good enough now.

Shifting it to a combat grip, she began to walk along the white wall.

Did they ever stop crying? she wondered. She supposed she couldn’t blame them. Babies were squeezed and pushed out of the nice, warm dark and dumped into the cold hard light of reality. With pain, she thought, and with blood. With their mothers screaming through it.

It was a tough start.

The wall angled, and she followed it as the box narrowed into a tu

Angling again, she saw Mavis stretched out on the floor.

“Hey! Hey!” But as she rushed forward, Mavis smiled, waved at her.

“I’m good, I’m fine. Next to magolicious. Just cooking the bun ’till it’s done. You better go help the others.”

“What others? Where are they?”

“That’s the big problem, right? You gotta fix it so you can get back before I pop. You remember all the stuff from the class?”