"You would? Really?" Mavis clutched Eve's hand, stared hard at her face. "Swear to God?"
"Swear to God."
"That makes me feel better. It really does." She let out a long, shaky breath. "Oh boy, it really does. Could I hang for a while? Maybe call Leonardo and tell him to-Oh God. Oh my God."
Eve popped up as Mavis's teary eyes went wide, as she sat straight up, pressing a hand to her belly. "What? Are you going to get sick or something?"
"It moved. I felt it move."
"What moved?"
"The baby." She looked up at Eve, and now her face glowed, as if someone had flicked a switch under her skin. "My baby moved. Like... like little wings fluttering."
Eve felt her own color drain, right down to the bone. "Is it supposed to do that?"
"Uh-huh. My baby moved, Dallas. Inside me. It's really real."
"Maybe it's trying to tell you not to worry so much."
"Yeah." Mavis wiped away fresh tears and smiled beautifully through them. "We're going to be fine. Better than best. I'm glad you were here when it happened. When I felt it. I'm glad it was just you and me and the baby, this one time. I'm not going to screw it up."
"No, you're not."
"And I'll know what to do."
"Mavis." Eve sat beside her again. "Looks to me like you already do."
12
Roarke walked into the house and saw Eve sitting on the steps, head in hands. Alarm twisted through his belly as he hurried to her.
"What's wrong? What's happened?"
She blew out a huge breath that hitched on the end. "Mavis."
"Ah, God. Is it the baby?"
"It's all about the baby. At least I think. What do I know? She wasn't even wearing lip dye. What was I supposed to do?"
"I think we'd better start over. I'll go first. Is everything all right with Mavis and the baby?"
"It must be. It moved."
"Where?" He caught himself, cast his gaze to heaven. "Now you've got me turned around. She felt the baby move, then? Isn't that a good thing?"
"She thought so, so it must be."
She sat back, looked at him. He was holding her hand still, studying her face. Waiting.
All so normal, unless you felt, as she felt, that subtle change of rhythm. Things weren't normal between them right now, and maybe they'd never be again. But they were both willing to pretend otherwise.
The pretense that there was nothing hanging over them was oddly terrifying.
But if it was all she had, she was as willing to hide behind it as he was.
"She was all down and teary when I got back," Eve continued. "Figured she'd mess up with the kid because she was messed up as a kid, or something. Afraid she wouldn't know what to do or how to feel. Had herself a serious weep."
"I've heard that's fairly normal for pregnant women. The weeping. I imagine she's a bit scared. It must be considerably scary if you think about the whole process."
"Well, I don't want to think about it, that's for sure."
He'd let go of her hand, and he'd shifted, just the slightest bit away from her. So she knew he felt it, too.
She called herself a coward, but she pushed it out of her mind.
"Anyway, she calmed down mostly, then the baby did whatever it did in there and she got all happy again. She was practically doing handsprings when she left to go tell Leonardo."
"Well, then, why are you sitting here looking miserable?"
"She's coming back."
"That's good. I'd like to see her."
"She's bringing Trina." Eve's voice rose nearly an octave as she gripped Roarke's shirt. "And their instruments of torture."
"I see."
"You don't. They don't gang up on you and come at you with strange, sharp implements or goop unknown substances all over your face and body. I don't know what they're going to do to me, and whatever it is, I don't want it."
"It's hardly as bad as all that, but you could actually have used work as an excuse and put all this off for a while."
"I couldn't fight her." She dropped her head back in her hands. "She had me with that naked face, how often do you see Mavis with a naked face?"
He touched her hair, the lightest stroke. "Never."
"Exactly. And her eyes are all puffy and red-and shiny. And her belly's poking out. This little white lump sticking out. What was I supposed to do?"
"Exactly what you did." He shifted to kiss the top of her head. "You're a good friend."
"I'd rather be a bitch. It's easier, and more satisfying emotionally, to be a bitch."
"And you're so good at it. Well, this should be a fine time for me to fire up that barbecue grill again."
"I can't believe you'd kick me when I'm down."
"I've a handle on it now. I've been practicing on the side. We'll have burgers. They're the simplest."
She could've told him she'd had a burger for lunch, but that would have put too glossy a shine on what she'd swallowed at the Blue Squirrel.
"I just want to work," she complained. But it was for form. It might do them, do everything some good, to have people around. Making noise, taking up energy.
Keeping the illusion all was normal, in place.
"I just want to spend a regular evening working through the insidious and murderous plots of the HSO and foreign techno-terrorists. Is that too much to ask?"
"Of course not, but life will intrude. Would you like me to tell you how Feeney and I did in Queens?"
"Shit. Shit!" She threw out her hands and nearly caught Roarke on the chin with a fist. "See? This has got me so messed up I didn't even remember what's going on with my own case. Where's Feeney?"
"He stayed back in Queens to supervise the removal of some of the sculptures. They're being impounded. You were dead-on about the bugs."
Look how you watch me, he thought. Trying to see inside my head, to read what's there. So we won't have to talk about it again. What are we going to do about this? he wondered.
"We found six sculptures-three out and three in-that were bugged." He smiled. He couldn't make it reach his eyes, but he smiled. "Very sexy technology, too, from the looks of it. It'll be fun to take one of the devices apart for analysis once we hack it out of the metal."
"Eyes or ears?"
"Both. From preliminary study, using a satellite bounce. No question whoever was watching and listening knows we've found them."
"Good." She pushed to her feet. "If Bissel was spying on his own wife for the HSO, they already know we're making moves. I had a meet with an assistant director today."
"Did you?" He said it very softly, very coolly, and sent a chill up her spine.
"Yeah. And if Bissel turned and was working with the other side, though I don't see a hell of a lot of differences between sides here, they'll be scrambling. I'm going to handle it," she said, and let the pretense drop, for a moment. "I'm going to handle it."
"No doubt. I don't intend to tell you how to handle it," he added, very carefully. "Can you say the same?"
"It isn't the same. It-" She pulled back, like a woman who felt herself sliding over a cliff. "Let's just table that. Concentrate on what is."
"Happy to. What is?"
"The investigation. We should take this upstairs, fill each other in."
"All right." He touched her face, then leaned in, brushed his lips over hers. "We'll do what's most normal for us, for now. Go up and talk about murder, then have a meal with friends. That suit you?"
"Yeah, it does." She made the effort, kissed him back. Then got to her feet. She rolled her shoulders. "This is better. Briefing and a burger. Keeps my mind off Trina and her scary bag of tricks."
Because he wanted her to smile, needed her to, he walked his fingers up her arm as they started upstairs. "What flavor skin cream do you suppose Trina will put on you?"
"Shut up. Just shut up."
***
"This," McNab said as he took in a gulp of tropical air, "is living."
"We're not living. We're investigating. There'll be no living until we've completed the investigative purpose of this trip."
He cocked his head, studied her from behind his fuchsia-tinted sunshades. "You sounded just like Dallas. I find that strangely arousing."
She elbow-jabbed him, but didn't put much behind it. "We're going straight to Waves and interview Diesel Moore regarding Carter Bissel. We'll go by Bissel's residence, speak to any neighbors or associates."
"Now you sound bossy." He gave her butt, currently covered in thin summer pants, a friendly pat. "I like that, too."
"You've got a grade on me, but I'm Homicide." And boy, did she love saying that. "So I'm in charge of this hunting party. And I say first we do the job, then we... live."
"I hear that. Still, we gotta rent transpo."
He slid his gaze to a line of scooters chained outside a hut beside their hotel. They were as colorful and bright as a circus parade, and screamed tourist.
Peabody grinned. "And I hear that."
***
Waves was a hole-in-the-wall joint screwed into a clapboard building on one of Kingston's less welcoming streets. They'd gotten lost twice-or had pretended to get lost as they'd scooted along narrow streets with the island breeze fluttering over their urban cheeks. After some heated debate, they'd agreed that he'd drive to, and she'd drive from. Peabody found it just as much fun to ride pinion with her arms clutched around his waist as it would've been to man the controls.
But as they made their way into the poorer and less hospitable section of the city, she was glad she had her weapon strapped under her summer-weight jacket.
She saw three illegals transactions in a two-block radius, and spotted a pair of funky-junkies jittering together on a stoop. When a flash all-terrain sportster cruised by, and the driver aimed his dark, dangerous eyes at her, she almost wished she was wearing her uniform.
Instead, she aimed hers right back, and deliberately, visibly, laid her hand on her weapon.
"Nasty vibes," she said into McNab's ear as the car gunned and slid off down a side street.
"Oh yeah. Penalties for illegals are stiff as a teenager's dick down here, but nobody seems to care in this sector."
There were sex shops and clubs, and the street LCs who sold the same commodity. But none of them looked particularly alluring. She could hear music pumping out of a few doorways, but the exotic charm of it was lost in the bored and repetitive come-ons of the hookers and the front men.
Tourists might wander in here, she thought, but unless they were looking for sex, illegals, or a blade in the back, they'd hurry out again quick.
They parked the scooter in front of the mean little bar, and while McNab used the chain the rental agent had provided to lock it to a lamppost, Peabody looked around.
"I'm going to try something," she said. "You might have to back me up."
She selected the two young men, one black, one white, sitting on a stoop and smoking Christ knew what out of a black pipe they passed between them. Gearing herself up, she put on her coldest cop face and swaggered up to them. And ignored McNab's hiss of warning from behind her.
"See that scooter?"
The black man smirked, took a long slow drag on the pipe. "Got eyes, bitch."
"Yeah, looks like you've got a pair each." She shifted her weight, used her elbow to ease the jacket back so her badge and weapon peeked out. "If you want to keep them in your skulls, you'll keep them on that scooter. Because if I come back out and it isn't where I left it, in the same condition I left it, my associate and I are going to hunt you down like sick dogs. While he's shoving that pipe up your ass," she said, showing her teeth to the white guy, "I'm going to pop your fellow asshole's eyes out. With my thumbs."
The white guy bared his own teeth. "Hey, fuck you."
Her stomach jittered, a little, but she kept the fierce and toothy expression in place. "Now, if you talk like that you're not going to earn the nice prize I have for you at the end of our contest. The scooter's there, untouched, when I come back out, I don't haul your ugly asses into a cage for possession and use, and I give you a nice shiny ten credits."
"Five now, five later."
She shifted her gaze to the black. "None now, and none later unless I'm happy with you. Hey, McNab, what happens when I'm not happy?"
"I can't talk about it. Gives me nightmares."
