Survivor in Death

“No.” To satisfy his curiosity, he walked over, glanced into one of the rooms. Home office-work station, minifriggie, shelves holding equipment, dust catchers, family photos. A small daybed, all coated now with the sweepers' residue.

“This is certainly large enough to be used as a bedroom.”

She let him wander, watched him step to the doorway of the boy's room and saw his face harden. Blood spatter on sports posters, she thought, blood staining the mattress.

“How old was the boy?” he asked.

“Twelve.”

“Where were we at that age, Eve? Not in a nice room, surrounded by our little treasures, that's for bloody sure. But Christ Jesus, what does it take to walk into a room like this and end some sleeping boy?”

“I'm going to find out.”

“You will, yes. Well.” He stepped back. He'd seen blood before, had shed it. He'd stood and studied murder when it was chilled. But this, standing in this house where a family had lived their ordinary lives, seeing a young boy's room where such a tender life had been taken, left him sickened and shaken.

So he turned away from it. “The office has as much space as this bedroom. The boy could easily have been across the hall.”

“So they had to surveil the house-or know it from the inside, enough to know who slept where. If they cased it from outside, they'd need to watch the patterns. Which lights went on, what time. Night vision and surveillance equipment, and they could see through the curtains easy enough.”

She moved to the master bedroom. “Morris tells me the same hand that did the domestic did both males. The other took the females. So they had their individual targets worked out in advance. No conversations, no chatter, no excess movements. Thought about droids, assassin droids.”

“Very costly,” Roarke told her. “And unreliable in a situation like this. And why have two-double the cost and detail of programming, when one could do it all? That's if you had the wherewithal and the skill to access an illegal droid, and program it to bypass security and terminate multiple subjects.”

“I don't think it was droids.” She walked out, into the little girl's bedroom. “I think human hands did this. And no matter how it looks on the surface, no matter how cold and efficient, it was personal. It was fucking personal. You don't slice a child's throat without it being personal.”

“Very personal.” He put a hand on her back, rubbed it gently up and down. “Sleeping children were no threat to them.” There were demons in this house now, he thought. Brutal ghosts of them with children's blood staining their hands. Lurking ones in him, and in her, that muttered, constantly muttered, of the horrors they'd survived.

“Maybe the kids were the targets. Or there's the possibility one or more of the household had some information that was a threat, so they all had to go in case that information had been shared.”

“No.”

“No.” She sighed, shook her head. “If the killers were afraid of information or knowledge, they would need to ascertain, by intimidation, threat, or torture, that the information hadn't been passed outside of the household. They would need to check the data centers, the whole fricking house, to be certain such information wasn't logged somewhere. The tight timing-entrance, murders, exit, doesn't leave room for them to have searched for anything. It's made to look like business. But it's personal.”

“Not as smart as they think,” Roarke commented.

“Because?”

“Smarter to have taken the valuables, to have torn the house up a bit. The entire horror would point more to burglary. Or to have hacked away at the victims, to make it seem like a psychopath, or a burglary gone very wrong.”

She let out a half laugh. “You know, you're right. You're damn right. And why didn't they? Pride. Pride in the work. That's good, that's good, because it's something, and I've got nothing. Fucking bupkus. I knew there was a reason I liked having you around.”

“Any little thing I can do.” He took her hand as they started downstairs. “And it's not true you have nothing. You have your instincts, your skill, your determination. And a witness.”

“Yeah, yeah.” She didn't want to think about her witness quite yet. “Why would you wipe out an entire family? Not you you, but hypothetically.”

“I appreciate the qualification. Because they'd messed with mine, had been or were a threat to what's mine.”

“Swisher was a lawyer. Family law.”

Roarke tilted his head as they went out the front door. “That's interesting, isn't it?”

“And she was a nutritionist, did a lot of families, or had clients with families. So maybe Swisher lost a case-or won one-that pissed one of his clients or opposings off. Or she pushed the wrong buttons on somebody's fat kid, or had a client die. And the kids went to private schools. Maybe one of the kids screwed with somebody else's kid.”

“A lot of avenues.”

“Just have to find the right one.”

“One of the adults might have had an affair with someone else's spouse. It's been known to a

“Looking there.” She slid behind the wheel of her vehicle. “But it's not solidifying. These two, they had what looks like a pretty solid marriage, and a lot of focus on family. Took trips together, went out together. Like a group. The picture I'm getting doesn't leave much time for extramarital. And sex takes time.”

“Done well, certainly.”

“I haven't found anything in their data, their possessions, their schedules that points to an affair. Not yet, anyway. Neighborhood canvass didn't shake out anything,” she added as she pulled away from the curb. “Nobody saw anything. I figure one of them lives in the area, or they had a bogus permit, or-Jesus-they took the goddamn subway, hailed a cab a couple of blocks away. I can't pin any of it down.”

“Eve, it's been less than twenty-four hours.”

She glanced in the rearview, thought of the quiet house on the quiet street. “Feels longer.”

It was always weird, in Eve's opinion, to have Summerset materialize in the foyer like a recurring nightmare the minute she walked in the door, but it was weirder yet to see him there, with a small blonde girl at his side.

The kid's hair was shiny, wavy blonde, as if it had been freshly washed and brushed. Who did that? Eve wondered. Did the kid deal with her own hair, or had Summerset done it? And the thought of that gave her the heebies.

But the kid looked comfortable enough with him, even had her hand in his, and the cat at her feet.

“Isn't this a fine welcome?” Roarke shrugged out of his coat. “How are you, Nixie?”

She looked at him-all blue eyes-and nearly smiled. “Okay. We made apple pie.”

“Did you now?” Roarke bent to pick up the cat when Galahad slithered over to rub against his legs. “That's a favorite of mine.”

“You can make a little one with the leftovers. That's what I did.” Then those eyes, big and blue, lasered into Eve's. “Did you catch them yet?”

“No.” Eve tossed her jacket over the newel post, and for once Summerset didn't snark or sneer at the habit. “Investigations like this take some time.”

“Why? Screen shows with cops don't take very long.”

“This isn't a vid.” She wanted to go upstairs, clear her mind for five minutes, then start back over the case, point by point. But those eyes stayed on her face, both accusing and pleading.

“I told you I'd get them, and I will.”

“When?”

She started to swear, might not have choked it back in time, but Roarke played a hand gently down her arm and spoke first. “Do you know, Nixie, that Lieutenant Dallas is the best cop in the city?”

Something, maybe it was speculation, passed over Nixie's face. “Why?”

“Because she won't stop. Because it matters so much to her that she takes care of people who've been hurt, she can't stop. If someone of mine had been hurt, I'd want her to be the one in charge.”