He went back to sit as she wiggled into the simple cotton briefs he’d set out.
“See,” she said as she pulled on the support tank. “You know.”
He’d gone for brown trousers. Not Feeney’s shit brown, but something that edged toward copper. And the shirt—nearly the same cream color as the robe—had needle-thin stripes of the copper and some navy. Navy, she assumed, because of the navy jacket. She strapped on her weapon, added the belt—also navy, with a copper buckle—the navy boots with thick copper soles, then the jacket that hit at her waist.
“This jacket has the magic lining, like the coat.”
“It’s a prototype,” he told her, removing the domes on the breakfast plates. “Removable, so transferable. Something we’re working on.”
“Huh. It’s really light.”
“In testing and simulations it blocks a full stun, a blade, and, should it come up against someone who’s managed to get hands on a gun, a bullet. Of course, I’d prefer you not put any of that to the test, but in case.”
He poured her coffee. “Now, tell me about the dream.”
“Right. Mostly annoying,” she began as she drowned the waffles in syrup. “It was in Dallas, in the room in Dallas.”
“Ah, Eve.”
“No, it doesn’t hit me like it used to. They’re dead, they’re dead and gone. I’m not saying it was sex on a tropical beach, but I handled it. First it was just the victim, just Mina.”
She told him as she ate, occasionally stabbing a fat berry between bites of syrup-soaked waffle.
“They were pretty damn bitchy,” she added, waving a piece of bacon that had Galahad’s nose twitching as he started casually toward the table.
And stopped dead at Roarke’s warning look.
“I know it’s me bitching at me, really. My subconscious and all that. Or how I figure thirteen-year-old girls would bitch. I mean, what do I know? The only thing I remember about being thirteen was it meant five more years until I could get out.”
She crunched into the bacon. “But I figure my brain worked out some truths. Mina had something to get back to. And if Dorian felt—feels—anything like I did, getting out’s enough.”
“You put them both in school uniforms.”
“Yeah, because I think that’s probably how it works. You’ve got a couple of girls or a handful, they’re all the same. Products. The underwear though, that’s different. Major expense. Investment,” she said again. “It’s like the robe. It feels good against the skin. You feel a certain way when you have it on. I put on my underwear for work, I feel a certain way. Put on the fancy stuff for under the fancy stuff, that feels a certain way. Maybe you don’t really think about it, but you feel it.”
“The uniform strips the individuality. Under it, the silk, the sexy accustoms you to that feel, that mood?”
“There you go. A kind of mind game. Some want someone they have to force, even hurt. That kind of power and dominance. But you can get an LC to role-play.”
“Not the same,” Roarke commented. “You don’t own an LC.”
“Okay, true enough. But why pay big bucks—and it has to be big bucks—to rape and brutalize when you can grab up a street kid for nothing? If you want a sex slave, a product, wouldn’t you pay more for one that does what you want, how you want it?”
“You think this is some kind of training. Target attractive young girls, lock them away from the familiar, indoctrinate them. The uniforms, the food, the hair and skin products.”
“Punishments, too. The carrot’s no good without the stick. Think of the military again, the old ‘drop and give me twenty.’ They have to break you down to build you up in their image, for their needs.
“A girl like Mina, who looks like Mina, who sells as a virgin, but one with sexual knowledge, one who’s gotten used to being photographed in the sexwear, or naked, or in sexual situations. You program a sex droid to be and do what you want, right? This could be like that, but with human girls.”
With a shrug, she polished off the waffles. “Or I could be way off base. But … Coincidence is bullshit, and it’s not bullshit that Mina Cabot and Dorian Gregg, same age, no prior connection, were both abducted, most probably from different areas, and both ended up in New York.”
She pushed up and began to load her pockets for the day.
“I’m pulling Willowby in, the SVU detective McNab knows. She may have some insight. I’ve gotta go.”