Page 27 of Bonded in Death

Personal, she determined.

Peabody clumped down the hall.

“I didn’t spill it to the bullpen,” she began.

“You don’t have to spill anything. Jenkinson has some sort of radar. Which makes him a damn good cop.”

“Everybody just wants to look out for you, Dallas.”

It only took a look.

“Yeah, you can look out for you, but that’s who we are. And who we are comes down from the top. From you. I don’t think you should leave them out of this.”

Eve spoke with just a touch of frost. “Don’t you?”

Peabody’s jaw jutted—just a touch. “No, I don’t. And I’m hungry. Can I hit the AutoChef? We’ll split a pizza. A pepperoni pizza. I’m just saving time,” Peabody claimed as Eve’s stare could have burned holes in flesh. “You’d have said yes, but it would take time. Plus, I grabbed just a mini breakfast burrito in the subway, hours and hours ago.”

It had been hours ago, Eve realized. “Fine.”

“If one of us got a message like this,” Peabody continued as she programmed, “you’d be all over it.”

She couldn’t deny it.

“We’re cops. We’re a family of cops. Oh, and I think you should contact Nadine, in case it’s the book/vid thing driving this.”

“Which I intended to do before you’re pulling pizza out of the AC.”

“You can have a slice first. Has Roarke gotten back to you?”

“No, and if he’d found Rossi in his vast herd of employees, present or former, he would have.”

“Yeah, he would.” Peabody handed Eve a plate, a tube of Pepsi, then sat on the floor with her own. “So that’s probably not it.”

“Probably not.” The pizza, Eve had to admit, smelled amazing. And tasted the same. “The canister’s from the Urbans, and the remote’s from now. The camera’s going to be from now. Code names like Wasp were, according to Whitney, fairly common during the Urbans era. Just a thing—like Baxter’s sometimes Horndog—not always an official spy deal.”

“It’s a spy deal,” Peabody insisted, and bit into her slice. “Oh God, this is so good. Anyway, digging into Rossi, there are gaps. They don’t look like gaps until you stop and look at them as gaps.”

“Which means?”

“Well, I’ve tracked some travel, back in the thirties, the forties, that doesn’t make a lot of sense. Not for a family man. It’s listed as business travel for the company, but why is he going to Dubai and Budapest and Dublin and Paris and Prague, like that, when he’s basically a cog in the wheel? It’s a lot of travel, Dallas.”

“Nothing recent?”

“Nothing since he retired. I mean nothing like before. Travel to Florence, to Provence, to his wife’s sister’s farm in Tuscany a few times—all travel with his wife, or the whole family. But he hardly left home in the last five years. And this is the first solo trip anywhere I found. And the first trip to the U.S. in like twenty-plus years.”

“Let’s contact his boss or supervisor.”

“I’ve got a call in. Got the runaround, but I’ve got a call in. I used the translator, but still.”

Eve kicked back, looked at her board.

She wanted some quiet time, some thinking time, but for now, she’d bounce off her partner.

“Someone contacts Rossi. Someone he considers a friend or colleague. He’s taken an oath.”

She thought of her bullpen.

“There’s a unity, a bond, so he doesn’t hesitate. Come to New York. He makes arrangements. Quickly, according to his wife. He’s going to stay with said friend—no hotel. He’s happy to reconnect with this friend.

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