“The morgue. It’s a bad one.”

“I’m sorry. Can you tell me?”

“Sixteen-year-old daughter of a decorated cop, one who recently earned his captain’s bars. Rape-murder, in her home. Her parents found the body this morning when they returned from a weekend holiday.”

“I’m very sorry.” Those intense blue eyes searched her face looking, she knew, for cracks.

“I’m fine.”

“All right. Is there anything I can do?”

You just did it, she thought, by asking. “I’m trying to fit the pieces together. One of them is Jamie.”

“Jamie? How?”

“They were friends.”

“Surely you don’t think-”

“No, I don’t think. I’ll check out his alibi simply because I don’t want to leave any blanks, but he’s not a suspect. She had a secret boyfriend-one it’s looking like targeted her, laid all the groundwork. I’m on my way to the morgue to see if some of the pieces in my head fit the evidence. After that, I’m hitting the lab.”

She saw a minute break in traffic, gunned it, flipped her vertical, soared over-she loved this new ride-and swung west.

“I asked Whitney to order Morris in today. Then I’m convening a briefing at Central. We need to run like crimes, go through the electronics, start a sweep on her areas of interest, so-”

“I believe I’ll come down and watch you work.”

“Look-”

“I can stay out of the way if that’s what you want. But you won’t keep Jamie out. I may be some help there. You’ve said her parents-one a police captain-returned home to find her dead. But you don’t mention security discs or the system. One assumes a veteran cop would take all necessary means, including strong security, to protect his family. There’s some e-work here.”

“That’s Feeney’s aegis.”

“I’ll be contacting him then.”

Knew you would. “Wouldn’t you like a nice quiet Sunday at home?”

“I would, if I had my wife here. But she’s having a different sort of day.”

“Suit yourself. Question. Why didn’t you tell me you were supplementing Jamie’s scholarship?”

“Busted.” He looked mildly disconcerted.

“It’s not a crime.”

“Well now I’m not altogether sure, as you’d see it as a bribe, wouldn’t you, to lure him into one of my companies?”

“Isn’t it?”

“Damn right, and a fine one, too. But the boy’s determined to be a cop. If he’s still of that mind when he’s finished at university, your gain is my loss. He’s bloody brilliant.”

“As good as you?”

Those wild blue eyes sparkled. “No, but a good deal more honest. I’ll see you at Central.”

“Don’t take Fifth. Jesus! I wish you could see this. There’s some asshole dressed like a peace sign. He’s a big yellow circle, with naked limbs. People are so damn weird. I’ll see you later.”

She’d known he’d come, just as she’d come to know how useful it was to have a thief-former-help analyze the bypassing of locks and codes.

Deena might have given her killer the passcode for the control room, if she’d had it. But if he’d shut down the cameras, wiped the hard drive, accessed the discs, he’d needed more than the code. He’d needed excellent e-skills.

And there her thief-former-was unsurpassed.

“Bloody brilliant,” she muttered, using Roarke’s own term.

A skeletal holiday shift manned the morgue, and those who remained behind to deal with the dead wore colorful shorts under lab coats. Music danced jauntily out of offices and cutting rooms.

She doubted the residents cared overmuch one way or the other.

She paused long enough to scowl at Vending. She wanted a tube of Pepsi, and didn’t want any bullshit from the damn machine.

“You!” She jabbed a finger at a passing tech, and the gesture had his face going as white as his bony legs. “Two tubes of Pepsi.” She pushed credits at him.

“Sure, okay.” Dutifully, he plugged them in, made her request. Even as the tubes plopped into the slot, and the machine began the soft drink’s current jingle, Eve snatched them out.

“Thanks.” She strode away.

The first sip was shockingly cold, and exactly what she was after. She continued down the white tunnel, chased by the echo of her own boots and the sticky hints of death that clung to the air under the blasts of citrus and disinfectant wafting out of the vents.

She paused outside the double doors of the autopsy suite not to brace herself to face that death, but the man who studied it.

She drew a breath, pushed through the doors.

There he was, looking the same.

He wore a clear protective coat over a suit of moonless night black. He’d paired it with a shirt of rich gold, and a needle-thin tie where both colors wove together. She frowned at the silver peace sign pinned to his lapel, but had to admit on Morris it worked.

His ink-black hair drew back from his exotic face in a single, gleaming braid.

He stood over the dead girl he’d already opened with his precise, almost artistic Y cut.

When his dark eyes lifted to Eve’s, she felt her belly tighten.

He looked the same, but was he?

“I guess this is a crappy welcome back.” She crossed over, offered the second tube. “Sorry I had to pull you in early, and on a holiday.”

“Thank you.” He took the drink, but didn’t crack the tube.

Her tightened belly began to jump. “Morris-”

“I have some things to say to you.”

“Okay. All right.”

“Thank you for finding justice for Amaryllis.”

“Don’t-”

He held up his free hand. “I need to say these things before we go back to our work, our lives. You need to let me say them.”

Feeling helpless, she stuck her hands in her pockets and said nothing.

“We deal with death, you and I, and with that death leaves grieving. We believe-or hope-that finding the answers, finding justice will help the dead, and those the dead leaves grieving. It does. Somehow it does. I no longer believe it, or hope it, but know it. I loved her, and the loss…”

He paused, opened the tube, drank. “Immense. But you were there for me. As a cop, and as a friend. You held my hand during those first horrible steps of grief, helped me steady myself. And by finding the answers, you gave me, and her, some peace. It’s a day to remember peace, I suppose. The job you and I do is often ugly and thankless. I need to thank you.”

“Okay.”

“More, Eve.” He rarely used her first name, and using it now, he closed his hand over her arm to keep her still. “Though it discomforts you.” And smiled, just a little-just enough to loosen the tightest knots in her belly. “Thank you for suggesting I speak to Father Lopez.”

“You went to see him?”

“I did. I had thought to go away, stay away until… Until. But there was nowhere I wanted to be, and frankly, I felt closer to her here. So I stayed, and I went to see your priest.”

She had to fight not to squirm. “He’s not mine.”

“He gave me comfort,” Morris continued over her flustered response. “He’s a man of unassailable faith, with a flexible mind and limitless compassion. He helped me with those next difficult steps, and helped me accept I’ll have more to take.”

“He’s… good, but not a pain in the ass about it. Much.”

Now the smile reached those dark eyes and eased more of her tension. “An excellent summary. And thank you for trusting me when I wasn’t sure I trusted myself.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Before your request came in this morning, I was going over the reasons-excuses-not to come back yet. Another week, maybe two. I wasn’t sure I was ready to be here, to face this place, to handle the work. But you asked for me. You trusted me, so what choice do I have but to trust myself?”

“She needs you.” On that single point Eve had Lopez’s unassailable faith. “Deena MacMasters needs you. You have a good team here, good people. But she needs you. She needs us.”

“Yes. So…” He stunned her by brushing his lips, very lightly on hers. “It’s good to see you.”