“Not me, really. Webster. Forgot.” She let out another sigh when he put the wand away. Thank God that was over for now. “He came in, wanted to talk to me about what he wanted to talk to Greenleaf about.” She dragged the shirt back on. “He’s turned in his papers.”

  She stared at him when he walked to the AutoChef. “You knew?”

  “I didn’t, no. But I’m not at all surprised. He’ll be relocating to Olympus then?”

  “That’s the plan.”

  “You don’t agree?”

  “It’s not for me to … Okay, no, I didn’t. Jesus, he’s got, what, sixteen, seventeen years on the job? He’s got rank, and he’s that close to making his twenty? He’s leaving the job, New York, and freaking planet Earth? But— What’s that?”

  “A soother. It’ll ease the last aches, and you’ll sleep better.”

  “I don’t want—”

  “It’ll top off the wanding. And it’s double chocolate.”

  “Hand it over, Nurse Nancy,” she muttered.

  He drew it just out of her reach. “I’m thinking I’ll switch it for the carrot and spinach blend.”

  “I got punched in the tit.”

  He handed it to her. “All right then. Webster. ‘But,’ you said.”

  “Right. But. When I listened to why, to what he wanted, I got it. Or started to. Then Angelo walked in, and I got it all the way. I know what it’s like to have someone who means everything, someone who can lift the hard and heavy off you just by being there.”

  “They love each other.”

  She gulped down soother, and the rich chocolate made her system smile.

  “Not always enough, is it? But it’s a hell of a strong start. So he’ll move to Olympus and train cops to be cops, not bullies with badges.”

  “Is that his plan?”

  “It is now, and he’ll be good at it. I love you.”

  “And I you.”

  “So we need to make a pact.”

  “Do we?” He smiled at her as he undressed. “And what sort of pact is that?”

  “Neither of us, ever, says to the other: ‘Hey, we have to leave planet Earth and go live on some space colony or outpost or station.’”

  He slipped into bed, drew her to him. “I can agree to that, with one qualification.”

  “What’s the qualification?”

  “I’d only say that, and you’d only agree to that, if planet Earth is in immediate danger of exploding, imploding, or becoming uninhabitable to life forms.”

  “That sounds fair. Okay, we have a pact.”

  “We do indeed. Lights out.”

  He’d been right, of course. Between the wanding and the soother, she dropped almost immediately into sleep.

  Where dreams found her.

  * * *

  In the room where he’d died, Greenleaf sat at his desk. But in place of the wall screen, the shelves, the window, photos of cops papered the walls around him.

  Dead ones, disgraced ones, cops in cages.

  “I did the job,” Greenleaf told her. “A badge doesn’t put you above the law, Lieutenant. A badge means you toe the line of the law. Serve and protect.”

  “I know what the badge means, Captain.”

  “Did they?” He gestured to the faces surrounding him.

  “Not everyone you looked into crossed the line. Those who did? That same law stripped the badge from them.”

  “Do you think I got them all?”

  “We never get them all. You knew that when you headed IAB, when you decided to take on other cops.”

  “I knew what it meant. I stand by what it meant.” He gestured to the walls. “How many of these have you looked at?”

  She scanned the faces. “Too many.”

  “What did you find?”

  “So far? That you did the job, as you saw it, your duty, as you saw it. Too many here exploited the job. Too many dishonored their badge, used it for gain, for violence, for power.”

  “You came from violence and cruelty. I know because you know,” he said when she didn’t respond. “You worked to become a cop, one who took the oath to protect and serve to heart rather than continue the cycle of violence and cruelty as some do. You could’ve chosen otherwise.”

  “No, I couldn’t have.”

  He picked up the glass—the iced tea—watching her as he drank. “You chose a man who crossed the line of the law, many, many times.”

  Even in the dream, even knowing it for a dream, she felt her blood heat.

  Hard-ass, she thought. In life and in death.

  “The man I chose—if chose is the word—gives his time and skill to help find justice for the dead. And he’s bled for it. He came from violence and cruelty while badges looked the other way. And still he honors the badge as much as I do.”

  With a slight shrug, Greenleaf set the glass down again.

  “You’re a violent woman.”

  “Maybe. Yeah.”

  “But not once have you exploited your badge for personal gain, to cause harm, for power.”

  Now she shrugged. “I’ve been known to lean on it some.”

  “A different matter. But a dirty badge left unpunished taints us all. If I pushed hard, some would say too hard, I believed that absolutely.”

  “The ones I’m looking at now needed to be pushed, and hard. But there were others, Captain, in your long career who fell into the gray.”

  His eyes held hers, unwavering. “In my job no gray could or did exist. Black or white, Lieutenant. Right or wrong. An absolute. I believed in the oath taken. In the end, I died for it.”

  With a long sigh, he looked at the walls, all the faces.

  They stared back, she saw, with rage, with a kind of terrible thirst.

  She put a hand on her weapon.

  “They haunt me. Not because I was wrong, but because they were. They haunt me,” he repeated. “And now they’ll haunt you.”

  The walls became men and women, ghosts that took form, and forms that fell on Greenleaf like wolves.

  And she couldn’t stop them.

  * * *

  She woke with a jolt in the dim light of predawn. The cat bumped his head against her side as Roarke stroked her face.

  “There now, a dream. I’m here.”

  He drew her into his arms, held her close. “It’s all right now.”

  “I’m okay. Hard dream. Not a nightmare. Well, at the end, I guess, but…” Closing her eyes, she laid her head on his shoulder. “I’m okay.”

  “You’ll tell me.”

  “Greenleaf at his desk, all the cops I’ve been looking at—like he looked at—photos plastered on the walls.”

  She told him the rest.

  “He knew they were coming, and he didn’t fight back. He just watched me while they covered him. Watched me try to stop them. They’d come for me next, and I would have stopped them. I’d have taken out as many as I could.”

  She breathed out. “But I woke up.”

  “He was a different kind of cop, wasn’t he then? One who did his job at a desk—just as you saw him. And you, Lieutenant, do a great deal of yours on your feet. I wonder if you think while one of those photos may be responsible, in some way, for his death, many of the others would stand and watch it happen without remorse.”

  He kissed her. “But not you. You wouldn’t and couldn’t stand and watch.”

  “He said they’d haunt me now.”

  “And was this one there?” Roarke asked, tracing a finger over her jaw.

  “No. But he wasn’t Greenleaf’s. He’s mine. And I’m okay. It gave me something to think about. And now I’m thinking about coffee, and that it’s nice to wake up and find you here. I’d rather it be with you sitting over there with the cat, but it’s close enough.”

  “You’ll have your coffee and another round with the wand. Then we’ll both sit over there.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Because she needed to shake it off, she grabbed a shower. And with the water beating hot, the steam rising thick, she pressed her forehead to the tiles.

  All those faces on the walls. All those faces filled with rage becoming men and women.

  Cops, who’d sworn to protect and serve.

  They’d torn Greenleaf to pieces, and he hadn’t fought back. He’d just accepted, as if he considered that, too, a part of the job.

  No gray, she thought. He’d seen the job, his world, in black-and-white. Was that her perception of him, she wondered, or the reality of him?

  Did it matter?

  She’d fought, as she’d fought Lansing and countless others since she’d taken the badge, taken the oath.

  Because she was a violent woman, or because she considered it a part of the job? Some of both?

  Did it matter?

  Either way, she decided, she’d fight till the bitter, bloody end.

  So she let it go until the dregs of the dream drained away with the water.

  And because she couldn’t see a way out of it, she sat while Roarke tended her bruises.

  “Better,” he said after another wanding, and traced a finger along her jaw. “Considerably better.”

  “Bruises heal; death doesn’t.”

  “Now, that’s a statement.”

  “You fight back, deal with the bruises, and you keep doing the job. That’s the deal you make. But he didn’t fight back—in the dream, I mean.” Which, she realized, hadn’t drained away after all. “He just sat there and took it. Is that how I see him, or is that who he was?”

  “He didn’t have a chance to fight back, did he? In the reality of it. Taken from behind as he was.”

  “Didn’t have a chance,” she repeated slowly. “Taken from behind. Looks like you get my subconscious more than I do. He didn’t have a chance to fight, not at the end. But he spent his entire career fighting—his way, in absolutes. From a desk mostly,” she considered. “And he died at a desk. Was that irony or planning?”

  She pushed up, stalking around the room in a raspberry-colored robe. “Irony’s sort of like coincidence—unless it’s deliberate. This was planning. Wife’s night out, he sits at his desk, back to the door. Ball game on the wall screen while he’s checking headlines, reading articles, playing comp games, having a cold drink.

  “Waiting for Webster, but the killer doesn’t know that.”

  “You’re back to the neighbor who could put him just there, at his desk, when they left.”

  “Yeah, that’s handy. But it’s a habit, so Arnez wouldn’t be the only one who knew or counted on him being just there. At a desk where—if that’s how you needed to see it—he passed judgment.”

  “All right.”

  He poured more coffee, then patted the seat beside him. “Come sit now. Eat. Food fuels the brain as well.”

  “Does it matter he died at the desk?” she wondered as she walked back to sit. “And that’s a bullshit question. Everything matters.”

  Under the warming lids Roarke lifted were pancakes. She barely registered them before globbing on butter, swamping them in syrup.

  “It’s a precise plan—I knew that—but if the desk played in, it adds another weight to the planning, the motive. It’ll matter. Maybe not right now, but eventually.

  “I didn’t like him.”

  “You’re not required to, Eve. Haven’t I seen you go to the wall for a victim you actively disliked?”

  “I didn’t like him,” she said again. “But I didn’t really see him beyond the IAB head who sat in judgment at his desk. I knew better. Christ, I know the damage dirty cops can do, but I didn’t like him, didn’t like his hard-line absolutes. Even though…”

  “You’re often a hard-line-absolute sort yourself.”

  “I’m sitting here eating pancakes with a former criminal, so how absolute could I be?”

  “Suspected only—and certainly reformed.”

  She shifted to him, smiled. “If I had a massive brain fart and asked you to steal … What’s a good one? Has to be a—the Mona Lisa, because everyone knows that one. I needed you to give me the Mona Lisa to hang in my closet, you’d break into the—Where is it?”

  “The Louvre, darling.”

  “Yeah, there. And I’d have it in my closet.”

  “What a man might do for love,” he murmured, and ate pancakes. “Sadly, you’d never ask.”

  “No, but I’m eating breakfast with someone who could and would if I did. What is it with that painting anyway? Just some woman with a smirk.”

  “Ah, but she’s glorious.” The Irish in his voice warmed with admiration. “You have to see her in person, have her eyes meet yours to fully appreciate the sheer magnificence of her. Not a smirk, no, not at all, but a smile both benevolent and knowing.”

  “So you’ve seen her in person, and had her eyes meet yours.”

  “I have.”

  “When the place—the Louvre place—was open or closed?”

  Now he smiled—not so benevolent, but very knowing. “Why not both?”

  “And again, eating pancakes with you, so my absolutes are pretty well shot to shit. But Greenleaf’s stayed firmly in place. I didn’t like him much, but since I’ve looked into him, his work, his … code, Feeney called it, I’ve sure as hell come to respect him.”

  She considered as she drank coffee. “He’d have had a file on me. That’s SOP when a cop uses maximum force, and I have. IAB investigates, and the cop goes through Testing. But he never came after me.”

  “Perhaps the respect was mutual.”

  “Maybe.” She polished off the last bite of syrup-soaked pancake before she stood. “I’m wearing black in case I can squeeze time to make his memorial, and can’t squeeze it to change into uniform.”

  “Make it lightweight,” Roarke advised her. “We’re in for a steam bath today.”

  “I like it hot.”

  “As well I know,” he said as she walked into her closet.

  She came out moments later—black trousers, black tank, black boots and belt, black jacket in hand—and thought how quick and easy mornings could be if she could grab black daily.

  She strapped on her weapon harness.

  “He said, in the dream, they’d haunt you. The dead and disgraced cops.”

  Eve nodded. “Yeah, he said that.”

  “Will they?”

  She picked up her badge, studied it. “No. Dreams are weird, and I think that he’d think they would. But no. One thing the captain and I can agree on, in the absolute? Wrong cops taint us all. If he made a mistake, if he pushed too hard on any of the cops on those dream walls, that’s on him.”

  She pocketed her badge and the rest.

  “The ones he took down who earned it? They’d come after me, same as him, but they don’t haunt me.”

  “Only put bruises on you.”

  “Before I kicked their asses.”

  “Before,” he said, and walked to her, rubbed his hands on her shoulders. “Do me a favor then and take better care of my cop today.”

  “If you’d seen the other guy, you’d know I took pretty good care of her yesterday.”

  He’d worry, she thought as she walked downstairs. Wishing he wouldn’t couldn’t stop it. So she’d take the best care of his cop she could manage.

  She’d meet Peabody at the apartment of Taylor Noy, age twenty-four, the daughter of former Captain Louis Noy, Anti-crime.

  Noy had taken his own life—with his service weapon—at the age of fifty while under investigation for what turned out to be a twenty-six-year career span of corruption.

  Over two decades of bad acts, Eve thought as she drove through the gates, polished over with citations for bravery, shiny medals, promotions. He’d run a small, tight syndicate of cops on the take. Witness tampering, political bribery, protection rackets.

  A syndicate Greenleaf had exposed with the help of a rookie Noy had begun to groom. Officer Kent Boxer’s body had been found in a meat locker, hanging from a hook. He’d been tortured and beaten before his throat was slit.

  Two days later, with the walls closing in, Noy opted out rather than face charges.

  His family lost their home and everything else Noy had accumulated through his corruption.

  Just shy of five months later, his nineteen-year-old son, Brice—criminal justice major, NYU—hanged himself.

  Noy’s wife, Ella, now living on Long Island, had remarried the previous year.

  The daughter, Taylor, Eve’s first stop, had an apartment, Lower West, so convenient to Greenleaf’s—and worked as an on-air reporter for Inside Sports, New York Bureau.

  Pretty sweet gig for a twenty-four-year-old, Eve mused as she drove downtown. But how did it feel to have your father go from hero cop—one with bars—to disgraced and dead? To lose everything, including your older brother?

  Instead of living your nice upper-middle-class life, you have to struggle. No more lovely brownstone, no more private school.

  Now your own mother shakes all of that off, marries someone else, moves to a fancy neighborhood on Long Island.

  Could trigger something, could demand payback for all those years, all those losses.

  Worth a conversation.

  She hunted for parking, lucked into a spot only a block and a half away from her destination.

  Roarke hit it on the steam bath, she thought as she started to walk. It might’ve been shy of eight A.M., but the temperature was already on the rise, and the air lay still and thick over the city.

  She passed a glide-cart already doing brisk business on iced coffee. It smelled like someone had tried to freeze bricks of mud.

  She considered the circumstances where she might actually drink iced cart coffee, and found none.

  She paused outside of Taylor Noy’s building. An old pre-Urban brick, well maintained, good security.

  Maybe a brisk ten-minute walk from Greenleaf’s building. Very possible their paths could cross.

  She glanced at the time, then spotted Peabody hustling down the sidewalk.

  She wore her red-streaked dark hair up in a high, bouncy little tail.

  Jesus.

  The pink boots, black pants (that was something, at least), and a shirt and thin, flowy jacket in pale, pale green.

  “What, are you going to a garden party?”

  “What? The jacket? Come on, it’s mag-plus. Leonardo was helping me organize some of my fabrics, and he saw this, sketched out this jacket design in like two minutes. Then he made it, right there and then.”