It wasn’t relevant. It didn’t matter. What difference did it make to the case that some bastards had beaten, raped, and strangled the love of his life? It wasn’t connected.

Identifying the victim was connected. Finding the killer mattered. The job didn’t include imagining some girl in Mexico left naked and dead by a river. She had enough blood and death crowded in her brain without adding more-more that didn’t apply to her or the work.

She slammed out of her vehicle, strode into the house. And with that pissiness tangled with a depression she hadn’t acknowledged, barely spared a snarl for Summerset.

“Kiss my unenhanced ass,” she said before he could speak, and kept walking. “Or I’ll plant my visibly shod foot up yours.” She stormed straight into the elevator, ordered the gym. What she needed, she thought, was a good, sweaty workout.

In the foyer, Summerset merely cocked an eyebrow at the pensive Galahad, then stepped to the house ’link to contact Roarke up in his office.

“Something’s disturbing the lieutenant-more than usual. She’s gone down to the gym.”

“I’ll take care of it. Thanks.”

He gave her an hour, though he checked on her by house screen once or twice. She’d hit the virtual run first, and it was telling, Roarke supposed, that she’d chosen New York’s streets rather than her usual beach canvas. Then she hit the weights, worked up a solid sweat. Roarke found it mildly disappointing when she didn’t activate the sparring droid and beat it senseless.

When she’d moved into the pool house and dived in, he shut down his work. By the time he got down, she was out of the pool and drying off. Not a good sign, he decided. Swimming generally relaxed her, and she tended to draw out her laps.

Still, he smiled. “And how are you?”

“Okay. Didn’t know you were home.” She pulled on a robe. “I wanted a workout before I went up.”

“Then it must be time to go up.” He took her hand, brushed her lips with his. Summerset’s barometer was, as usual, accurate, Roarke thought. Something was disturbing the lieutenant.

“I’ve got to put a couple hours in.”

He nodded, led the way to the elevator.

“The case is a bitch.”

“They’re rarely otherwise.” He watched her as they rode to the bedroom.

“I don’t even know who the vic was.”

“It’s not your first John Doe.”

“No. It’s not my first anything.”

He said nothing, only moved to the wall panel to open it and select a wine while she grabbed pants and a shirt from her drawer.

“I’m going to stick with coffee.”

Roarke set her wine down, sipped his own.

“And I’m just going to grab a sandwich or something. I need to do a search on the records I just got, do some cross-references.”

“That’s fine. You can have your coffee, your sandwich, your records. As soon as you tell me what’s wrong.”

“I just told you the case is a bitch.”

“You’ve had worse. Much worse. Do you think I can’t see you’ve got something knotted inside you? What happened today?”

“Nothing. Nothing.” She scooped her fingers through the messy cap of hair she hadn’t bothered to dry. “We’ve confirmed the vic isn’t Flores, followed a lead that didn’t pan, have a couple of others that may.” She picked up the wine she’d said she didn’t want, and drank as she K drad paced the bedroom. “Spent a lot of time talking to people who worked with or knew the vic, and watched the various degrees of meltdown when I informed them he wasn’t Flores, or a priest.”

“That’s not it. What else?”

“There is no it.”

“There is, yes.” Casually, he leaned back on the dresser, took another sip of his wine. “But I’ve time to wait until you stop being a martyr and let it out.”

“Can’t you ever mind your own business? Do you always have to stick your fingers in mine?”

Pissing her off, he knew, was a shortcut to getting to the core. His lips curved, very deliberately. “My wife is my business.”

If her eyes had been weapons, he’d be dead. “You can stick that ‘my wife’ crap. I’m a cop; I’ve got a case. One to which, for a change, you have no connection. So butt out.”

“How’s this? No.”

She slammed down her wine, started to storm for the door. When he simply stepped into her path, her fists bunched. “Go ahead,” he invited, as if amused. “Take a shot.”

“I ought to. You’re obstructing justice, pal.”

In challenge, he leaned in a little more. “Arrest me.”

“This isn’t about you, goddamn it, so just move and let me work.”

“And again, no.” He caught her chin in his hand, kissed her with more force. Drew back. “I love you.”

She spun away from him, but not before he saw both the fury and frustration on her face. “Low blow. Fucking low blow.”

“It was, yes. Sod me, I’m a bastard.”

She rubbed her hands over her face, raked them back through her damp hair. Kicked the dresser. Coming around now, he thought. He picked up her wine, crossed over to hand it back to her.

“It doesn’t have anything to do with the case, okay? I’m just pissed off it has a hook in me.”

“Then take the hook out. Otherwise, aren’t you the one obstructing justice?”

She took a slow sip, watching him over the rim. “You may be a bastard, but you’re a cagey one. Okay. Okay. We followed through on some information,” she began, and told him about Solas.

“So I find myself thinking, this Lino or whoever the hell he is, he may have killed Flores. Murdered him in cold blood for all I know. He was a killer.”

“You established that?”

“He was Soldados. Badasses in El Barrio. He had the gang tat, had it removed before the ID. They were a New York gang back in the day, and his tat indicates he was high up the chain. He had the Soldados kill mark on the tattoo, so he killed, at least once.”

“Harder, isn’t it, when your victim had made victims?”

“Maybe it is. Maybe. But at least he did something about this, about this kid. He beat the shit out of Solas, protected the kid, when nobody else did, would. He got her out, got her away.”

No one got you out,Roarke thought. No one got you away. Until you did it yourself.

“So we go to see the mother, get a gauge on whether she or the kidfucker might’ve done Lino.” Eve dug her hands into her pockets as she wandered the bedroom. “No chance on her, no way in hell. I can see it as soon as I see her, shaking and shuddering at the thought the husband got out of Rikers. I wanted to slap her.” Eve stopped, closed her eyes. “A slap’s more humiliating than a punch. I wanted to slap her-and I guess I did, verbally.”

He said nothing, waited for her to finish digging it out.

“She was there, goddamn it.” Her voice rang with it, with the anger, the misery, the bitterness. “She was right there when that son of a bitch was raping the kid, over and over. She let him beat her, and that’s her business, but she did nothing to help her own kid. Not a damn thing. Didn’t know, didn’t see, oh my poor baby. And I don’t get it. How can you not see, how can you not know?”

“I don’t know. Maybe some don’t see, refuse to know what they can’t stand.”

“It’s no excuse.”

“It’s not, no.”

“And I know it’s not like me, it’s not the same. My mother hated me, hated the fact of me. That’s some-thing I remember, one of the few things I remember about her. If she’d been there when he raped me, I don’t think she’d have cared one way or the other. It’s not the same, but…” She stopped, pressed her fingers to her eyes.

“It pushed it back into your face,” Roarke finished. “It made it now again, instead of then.”

“I guess.”

“And wasn’t it worse, isn’t that what you think? Worse for this girl because there was someone there who should have seen, should have known, should have stopped it?”

“Yes, yes.” She dropped her hands. “And I found myself detesting this pitiful, sad, terrified woman and giving props to a dead man I strongly suspect-hell, I know-was a murderer.”