Page 83 of Devoted in Death

And still he rode, past reason, took more. Took all.

And with all, released.

Her ears rang with the hammering of her own heart. His knocked against her like a fist. She sensed him start to move and managed to get her limp arms around him.

“No. Just stay,” she murmured. “Just stay awhile.”

And slept.

•••

She woke in the dark, pulled from deep and blessedly dreamless sleep by the insistent beeping of her communicator.

Disoriented, still tangled with Roarke, she tried to push up.

“Wait. Lights on, ten percent.”

At Roarke’s command, the dark lifted as he rolled away.

“My comm...”

“Still in your trousers.” He found them, fished the communicator out while she tried to scrub the fog of sleep away.

“Ah—”

“Block video,” he advised.

“Christ. Yes. Block video,” she ordered. “Dallas.”

“Dispatch, Dallas, Lieutenant Eve.”

At 4:18 a.m., she learned of Reed Aaron Mulligan.

Downtown again, she thought. A full day ahead of schedule. Unless...

“Do you want me to wake Peabody?” Roarke asked.

“Yes. No. No, no point. It’s going to be one of theirs, but that’s gut, not fact. I’ll talk to this Mulligan’s mother first.”

“Then I’m with you. With you,” he repeated before she could object.

She was showered, dressed and pumped on coffee inside ten minutes, with Roarke barely a minute behind as he remoted a vehicle over from the garage.

Then they were out the door, into the cold, clear night, where one of his burly A-Ts waited, engine and heaters running.

“Possible missing lives with his mother on Leonard, off Broadway.”

“I heard Dispatch.” He drove fast, smooth through the gates and onto streets quiet in the predawn winter. “This is a break-in pattern, yes?”

“If they’ve got him, yeah. Jayla Campbell should have had another day. Maybe something went south there, and they’ve dumped her body where we haven’t found it yet. Or disposed of it another way. Or...”

“Still have her. Alive.”

“Doubtful, but I’d like to think so. And it may be this is a false alarm. The missing’s twenty-one—barely.” She scanned her PPC, and the run she’d already started on him.

“A couple juvie bumps, looks like. Illegals, nothing major. Currently working as assistant manager, days, at a music store—instruments, lessons. Got some income here from a band called Thrashers.”

She dug a little deeper. “Plays the guitar, sings. Looks like a handful of club dates—low-rent. Have to check it out, but—”

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