"Physical disabilities?"

"None. Clean health card."

Reeanna's eyes narrowed in concentration, either over the profile or the dessert she was slowly spooning into her mouth. "Any psychological defects, treatment?"

"No."

"Interesting. I'd love to see the brain wave pattern. Available?"

"Currently classified."

"Hmm." Reeanna sipped her latte contemplatively. "Without any known physical or psychiatric abnormalities, no chemical addictions or usage, I'd lean toward a brain blip. Possible tumor. Yet I assume none showed up in autopsy?"

Eve thought of the pinprick, but shook her head. "Not a tumor, no."

"There are cases of predisposition that slide through genetic scanning and evaluation. The brain is a complicated organ and still baffles even the most elaborate technology. If I could see his family history… Well, to take a wild guess, I'd say your man had a genetic time bomb that went undetected through normal analysis. He'd reached the point in his life where the fuse ran short."

Eve cocked a brow. "So he just blew?"

"In a manner of speaking." Reeanna leaned forward. "We're all coded in, Eve, in the womb. What we are, who we are. Not just the color of our eyes, our build, our skin tones, but our personalities, our tastes, our intellect, and our emotional scale. The genetic code is stamped on us at the moment of conception. It can be altered to a certain extent, but the basis of what we are remains. Nothing can change it."

"We are what we're born?" Eve thought of a filthy room, a blinking red light, and a young girl curled into a corner with a bloody knife.

"Precisely." Reeanna's smile beamed out.

"You don't take into account environment, free will, the basic human drive to better oneself?" Mira objected. "To consider us merely physical creatures without heart, soul, and a range of choices to be made over a lifetime lowers us to the level of animals."

"And so we are," Reeanna said with a sweep of her fork. "I understand your viewpoint as a therapist, Dr. Mira, but mine, as a physiologist, runs down a different lane, so to speak. The decisions we make throughout our life, what we do, how we live, and what we become were printed on our brains while we swam in the womb. Your subject, Eve, was fated to take his life at that time, in that place, and in the manner he chose. Circumstances might have altered it, but the results would have been the same, eventually. It was, in essence, his destiny."

Destiny? Eve thought. Had it been hers to be raped and abused by her own father? To become less than human, to fight her way through that abyss?

Mira shook her head slowly. "I can't agree. A child born in poverty on the edge of Budapest, taken from the mother at birth and raised in privilege, with love and care in Paris, would reflect that upbringing, that education. The emotional nest," she insisted, "and the basic human drive to better oneself can't be discounted."

"I agree, to a point," Reeanna qualified. "But the stamp of the genetic code – that which predisposes us to achievement, failure, good or evil, if you will – overrides all else. Even with the most loving and nurturing of backgrounds, monsters breed; and in the toilets of the universe, goodness, even greatness survives. We are what we are – the rest is window dressing."

"If I subscribe to your theory," Eve said slowly, "the subject in question was fated to take his life. No circumstances, no twists or turns of environment would have prevented it."

"Precisely. The predisposition was there, lurking. Likely an event set it off, but it may have been a minor thing, something easily passed off in another brain pattern. Research still under way at the Bowers Institute has complied strong evidence of genetic brain patterns and their unassailable influence on behavior. I can get you discs on the subject, if you like."

"I'll leave the head studies to you and Dr. Mira." Eve shoved her coffee aside. "I've got to get back to Cop Central. I appreciate the time, Dr. Mira," she said as she rose. "And the theories, Reeanna."

"I'd love to discuss them further. Any time." Reeanna lifted a hand and shook Eve's warmly. "Do give my best to Roarke."

"I will." Eve shifted slightly on her feet when Mira rose to kiss her cheek. "I'll be in touch."

"I hope you will, and not just when you've a case to discuss. Tell Mavis hello for me when you see her."

"Sure." Hitching her bag on her shoulder, Eve swung her way out, pausing briefly to sneer at the maitre d'.

"A fascinating woman." Reeanna slid her tongue in one long, slow lick over the back of her spoon. "Controlled, a little angry underneath, straight focused, and unused and vaguely uncomfortable with casual displays of affection." She laughed lightly at Mira's lifted brow. "Sorry, professional pitfall. It drives William mad. I didn't mean any offense."

"I'm sure you didn't." Mira's lips curved, and her eyes warmed with understanding. "I often find myself doing the same. And you're right, Eve is a very fascinating woman. Quite self-made, which, I'm afraid, might unbalance your genetic printing theory."

"Really?" Obviously intrigued, Reeanna leaned forward. "You know her well?"

"As well as possible. Eve is a… contained individual."

"You're very fond of her," Reeanna commented with a nod. "I hope you won't take it the wrong way if I say she wasn't at all what I expected when I learned Roarke was to marry. That he was to marry at all was a surprise, but I imagined his spouse as a woman of polish and sophistication. A homicide detective who wears her shoulder harness as another woman might an heirloom necklace wasn't my conception of Roarke's choice. Yet they look right together, suited. One might even say," she added with a smile, "destined."

"That I can agree with."

"Now, tell me, Dr. Mira, what is your opinion of DNA harvesting?"

"Oh, well now…" Happily, Mira settled down for a lively busman's holiday.

At her desk unit, Eve juggled the data she'd compiled on Fitzhugh, Mathias, and Pearly. She could find no link, no common ground. The only real correlation between the three was the fact that none of them had exhibited any suicidal tendencies before the fact.

"Probability the subject cases are related?" Eve demanded.

Working. Probability five point two percent.

"In other words, zip." Eve blew out a breath, scowling automatically when an airbus rumbled by, rattling her stingy window. "Probability of homicide in the matter of Fitzhugh using currently known data."

With currently known data, probability of homicide is eight point three percent.

"Give it up, Dallas," she told herself in a mutter. "Let it go."

Deliberately, she swiveled in her chair, watching the air traffic clog the sky outside her window. Predestination. Fate. Genetic imprint. If she were to believe in any of that, what was the point of her job – or her life, for that matter? If there was no choice, no changing, why struggle to save lives or stand for the dead when the struggle failed?

If it was all physiologically coded, had she simply followed the pattern by coming to New York, fighting her way out of the dark to make something decent out of herself? And had it been a smear on that code that had blocked out those early years of her life, that continued to shadow bits and pieces of it even now?

And could that code kick in, at any given moment, and make her a reflection of the monster who had been her father?

She knew nothing of her other blood kin. Her mother was a blank. If she had siblings, aunts, uncles, or grandparents, they were all lost in that dark void in her memory. She had no one to base her genetic code on but the man who had beaten and raped her throughout childhood until in terror and pain she had struck back.