Chapter Twenty-Two
At the four-hour mark, Roarke came in, wanded her.
“We stopped long enough to watch your part of the media conference.” He touched his lips to her cheek. “You make me proud.”
“Stealing my line. Anyway, I don’t know if it’ll work, but it’s my best shot.”
“Will he try for Banner and O’Brian?”
“I don’t think so. It goes against his nature. He went after them because they took his family, and all the rest. And didn’t pay. They’re paying now. At least that’s how I see it. And him.”
“You could go home, rest a few hours.”
“I’ve got paperwork on this, and I want it done. I’m good. Better.”
“Better yet when you’ve eaten something. Chicken noodle soup should go down nicely.”
So she ate, and it did go down nicely. She dealt with paperwork, talked with Teasdale.
At the next four-hour mark, Roarke returned to put her through the process again.
“We heard it’s done now.”
“Senator Hawley flipping added some nice weight, add a Supreme Court justice is now under investigation and yadda yadda. Banner thinks he can manipulate things from inside. He’s wrong. He lost it all.”
“Can you close it out, for tonight anyway?”
“I’m going to.”
“Then I say we finish this, and go get started. It’ll give us a bit of time to see Phoebe and Sam, meet more of the families before the rest get there.”
“I guess we can do that. By the way, Mira said no sex for two days unless you do all the work.”
He smiled, helped her get back into the brace. “It’s not work when you enjoy it, is it now?”
By that criteria, Eve supposed neither of them ever worked.
Still, she took another update from Reo on the way to the garage.
“So,” she told Roarke, “the fancy lawyers with brains convinced the evil bloodsucker that going to trial would end in conviction and be worse. Even if they managed to get some of his accounts unfrozen, those legal fees and fines would eat that right up. He gets multiple lifetimes, concurrent, in prison, off-planet. Concurrent because he’s agreed to flip on others. Apparently a lot of them globally.”
She settled back. “Now I’m putting it away.”
“Well done, Lieutenant.”
“Back at you, Consultant.”
As he drove, she took off her weapon harness, locked it in the glove box.
They drove through the gates of the big, happy house, where the residents had added a bouquet of fall flowers. Party lights, ready to glow at dusk, danced along the roof and rails of the covered porch.
“Months ago, this was big, overgrown, half-dilapidated weirdness.” Still amazed at the transformation, Eve got out of the car. “Now it’s not.”
As they walked to the porch, the front door opened. August, the manny—former military—came out with Bella on his hip.
She wore a short pink dress that stopped at the calves over white leggings, sparkling pink shoes, pink-and-white candy-striped ribbons in her sunny hair, and a huge smile.
The smile faded, the big blue eyes teared up, when she saw Eve’s face.
“Das,” she said in a voice drenched in sorrow as she reached out.
“Hey, hey, don’t do that. It’s okay. I’m okay.”
“Hurt. Das.” She touched her lips, light as butterflies, to Eve’s cheeks. Then her eyes went hot. “Bad guy!”
“Yeah.” She decided to skip over the man whose fists battered her face and go to the source. “He’s in jail, where bad guys go.”
Thinking of Eve’s shoulder, Roarke plucked Bella into his own arms. “Are you ready for the party?”
Though her eyes still glistened, they gave Roarke an under-the-fluttering-lashes smile. “Party. Rrr-rrr-ork! Someshit here, Nabs, Peadobbies. Friends! Babies!”
“Why don’t we take them inside?” As he gestured, August looked at Eve. “That was a good and true statement you made today. One people need to hear.”
Now she thought of Redman. “I hope they heard it.”
A few seconds after they stepped in, music—pulsing but muted—streamed through the air. Trina stepped out of the side sitting room.
“Got orders to start the house music.”
She wore a skin suit in murderous red with airboots to match. Her hair spilled down in swirls of black and silver.
And her eyes narrowed on Eve’s face. “Not as bad as I heard, but bad.”
“Das hurt.”
“I know, sweetcakes. You and August should take Roarke back to his choice of Party Centrals. You”—she pointed at Eve—“come with me.”
“Why? Where?”
“Upstairs to my setup. I can cover that, mostly. Unless you want to spend the next few hours with people staring at you, sad-eyeing you, asking you what happened.”
She didn’t. She really didn’t. And she remembered she’d had a black eye on her wedding day. Trina had masked it.
She went upstairs.
“This place,” Trina said. “I can’t get over it. It’s a feel-good in every square foot.” She led Eve into one of the guest rooms.
“You brought in a salon chair, and the stuff.”
“A classy one. I took the day off to do hair and makeup for anybody who wanted it.” She whipped out a cape, swirled it over Eve, pointed to the chair.
“They’re really fun, interesting people.
And Peabody’s bro-in-law. Whew! I’m going to start looking for a farmer.
I’m going to shape up your hair while I’m at this. ”
“But—”
“Shh. This cream I’m gonna put on your face first? It’s going to ease the soreness. Sit back, relax.”
Despite her innate scariness, Trina’s hands were as gentle as Bella’s lips. Deciding she had no choice, she let her mind drift while Trina chattered about party prep, the people she’d already met.
“Hey, Phoebe. How’s it going?”
At Trina’s greeting, Eve opened her eyes just before Peabody’s mother, an armload of bracelets jangling, took her hand.
A pretty woman, she wore her waterfall of dark hair in long loose curls—likely Trina’s doing. Her party dress, with its skirt flowing around her knees, with chains, beads, and crystals dripping over the bodice, hit the color of the crushed strawberries Eve had had for breakfast.
Brown eyes studied Eve minutely in what Eve thought must be the Mom Exam.
“Everything’s under control,” she told Trina. “How are you feeling, Eve?”
“Okay. Better. Fine.”
“I’ll go with the middle one, and add you can take a punch.”
“When I have to.” She dug for something more. “The light you made, it’s really beautiful.”
“Thanks. I had no idea it would hang over a table Sam made the year his DeeDee was born. Fate finds a way, and I’m not ashamed to say we both shed a tear over it. This house, it couldn’t be more what our girl needs, like the job couldn’t be more what she wants.”
“She’s a good cop.”
“Yes. Trina, you’re a magician.”
“Fucking A,” Trina agreed. “When I’m done, she’ll look like she spent the day at the spa instead of getting her ass kicked in an elevator.”
“He’s on some kind of super ’roid. And he ambushed me. I don’t need lip dye.”
“It’s not just lip dye, in a very natural tone, it has soothing properties. So quiet. We trust you to take down bad guys. Trust me with face and hair.”
A woman came in, one who looked as if she’d walked runways in Paris, in Milan. Trina had probably done the hair in the fancy braid that swept back from the high-cheekboned, almond-shaped amber-eyed, gold-dust-skinned face.
“Circe, meet Eve. Eve, this is Sam’s mother, Circe.”
One of Peabody’s “grannies”? Eve thought. How?
“At long last,” she said in a voice as smooth as her face. “We’ve been worried about you. And since we took time to watch some of the media report, had reason. I see Trina’s working her magic. I’m going to work some of mine.”
“Circe’s a healer,” Phoebe told Eve.
“Okay, listen, I—”
But the woman already ran long, slim fingers over Eve’s rib cage.
“Ah, very well treated, but still some pain here. You block it well. The shoulder . . . we’ll draw some away. Breathe out now, brave girl, breathe out the dark, breathe in the light.”
Outnumbered yet again, trapped by manners, wrapped in confusion, she breathed.
Then Mavis came in, a short purple dress scattered with glittery silver stars stretched over her baby mountain, silver boots rising up under the swingy skirt.
Her hair, also purple and scattered with silver stars, spilled in curls out of a high topknot.
“Oh, you look good! You look good hitting mag! Do you feel good? Do you?”
Because tears threatened eyes dyed as purple as the dress, Eve would have lied, but she didn’t have to. “Yeah, all good.”
Rubbing circles on the mountain, Mavis moved closer, closer, until her nose all but bumped Eve’s. “You can hardly see any bruising, even this close. Trina, you’re the ult of all ults.”
She kissed Eve’s cheeks as Bella had.
“Hair next.”
“She’s just snipping it some.”
If she hadn’t actually felt Trina’s eyes roll over her head, she’d have seen it in Mavis’s smile.
In the end, though she couldn’t claim her body hit mag, it hit good, and that was more than enough. Trina may have fussed with her eyes, smudging stuff, but she’d also managed to conceal the shiners. And maybe she’d done some of the fussy stuff with the hair, but no strange colors added.
“My work is done.”
Relieved, Eve stood. “I appreciate it.” At Trina’s snarky look, Eve repeated, “I appreciate it. Sincerely.” She turned to Circe. “And I appreciate whatever you did.”
“We all have gifts. They’re ours to give or withhold.”
“And here’s mine.” Phoebe handed her a glass. “Champagne cocktail.”
“Come down, come down, everybody come down.” Mavis grabbed Eve’s hand. “So many people are here, and we’re already having the mag of all times. You have to meet McNab’s family. They’re triple cartwheels.”
The house already seemed full of people, a lot of them kids watched over or herded by August and others. She found Roarke talking with Sam Peabody about the house renovations.
Sam, a man with a skinny build, a narrow face softened by kind gray eyes, turned to take Eve’s free hand.
Like his wife’s, it was the hand of someone who worked with them.
“It’s so good to see you, and on such a happy night. This house, it’s a dream. Dee’s living her dream. I hope you’re feeling as good as you look.”