Page 33 of Festive in Death

“With that in mind.” He took her hand, pulled her up. “Let’s go to bed.”

“Didn’t we do that already?”

“And sleep. It’s nearly midnight. If you keep at this much longer you’ll have been up for twenty-four hours.”

“I feel like I want to push it, and it’s because I don’t like him.”

“You won’t like him any better tomorrow. You can push then.”

“It looks like I will. Whatever else you can say about Ziegler, he wasn’t lazy. Between work and sex, the guy kept revved every damn day.”

“As you do.” He tugged her along. “Time to shut down the engines.”

•••

She woke to the scent of coffee, and really, it didn’t get better than that.

And yet it did.

When she slit open her eyes, she saw Roarke. Fully dressed in one of his ruler-of-the-business-world suits—the cat sprawled over his lap. He sat on the sofa in the bedroom sitting area, working on a tablet. Financial numbers, data, codes, scrolled by on the screen he’d switched to mute.

The faint blue wash from tablet and screen provided the only light, making him look both mysterious and fascinating.

She had no idea of the time, was too lazy to look. Instead she watched him work while she ticked off the order of what she needed to do that morning.

She needed to tag Peabody, tell her partner they’d meet at Buff Bodies, pursue the angle of competitor killer. Swing by the lab, browbeat or bribe Dickhead—Chief Tech Dick Berenski—on the tea and incense. Talk to Trina and Sima again. And she thought another pass through the crime scene was in order, this time looking specifically for tea and incense.

Do that, she decided, before the lab. Have the samples right there in hand—if she found more.

And onto more interviews with the vic’s clients.

Someone who knew him. Someone he’d let in the apartment, let into the bedroom while he packed for his business trip.

Client. Coworker. Blackmail mark. Lover.

Would he have been confident or arrogant enough to let a mark or a seriously pissed-off client, lover, associate into the bedroom?

She suspected not, but it wouldn’t hurt to get an expert opinion.

Add a quick session with Mira to the list.

“Lights on, twenty percent,” Roarke said, looking over into her eyes. “You might as well have some light since you’re thinking so loud.”

“I was thinking very quietly. You have bat ears.”

“When it comes to you, apparently.”

She pushed up to sit. “What’re you working on? I can take an interest,” she added when he cocked an eyebrow. “At... shit, five-thirty-eight in the morning.”

“Actually, you might be interested. We’ve made a few changes to the design of An Didean, and have added a memorial roof garden.”

The old building in Hell’s Kitchen, she thought, he’d bought with the plan to rehab and turn it into a safe house for troubled kids. And where the bones of twelve young girls had been discovered behind the walls.

“That’s nice.”

“We’ll have a dome so it can be used year-round, and those we house there can learn something of horticulture. The architect’s wondering if we should use stones or benches with the names of the girls who died there.”

Eve rose, saying nothing as she crossed to the AutoChef for coffee. The cat deserted Roarke to sprint over to her, winding slyly between her legs, ever hopeful, she knew, that food was involved.

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