“Your brain’s tired. We’ll think about it more when it’s not, see if we can work something. I’ll talk to Feeney, bat it around a bit. It may be we can work it another way.”
“What other way?”
“We’ll work on it.”
“Is your brain tired?”
“Tired enough.”
“Can I see your results? Just run them through with me, and we’ll call it.”
“There’s a deal.” He reached around her, keyed something. “On-screen,” he ordered. “All right then. The first, a pre-Urban factory in the Garment District.”
They went through them all, and though they ran over the hour, he thought she’d sleep easier for it.
* * *
Sebastian didn’t. He sat in what he thought of as the family room—a jumble of furniture in a space that had once served as a lobby.
He’d seen the media reports with Dorian’s face flashing over the screen. The fact Eve Dallas, a murder cop, looked for her, termed her a material witness in the violent death of another child, worried him.
He’d promised Dorian she could stay, and he intended to keep his word to her. He doubted many others had kept theirs to her in her short life. But with Dallas on the hunt, that promise carried considerable weight.
More, if she hunted Dorian, others—much less concerned with law and order—might hunt as well. And that put them all at risk.
Even as he considered options, alternatives, precautions, she wandered out.
He set the book he hadn’t been able to focus on aside. “Can’t sleep?”
“I had these dreams. I can’t even remember, they were all mixed up. Maybe I could sit out here for a while.”
“All right. It’s what I do sometimes when I can’t sleep. Like tonight.”
She took a couch covered with wild orange flowers someone had set on the curb.
Tall for her age, he thought, and very, very lean. Even with her sleepy eyes and disordered hair, she made a picture.
“You like to read books?”
“I do,” he told her. “Do you?”
“We got to read them on a tablet in school. But I never brought mine home.”
“Why not?”
She yawned hugely. “She’d’ve sold it, probably. I don’t want to ever go back there. I don’t know what happened to my backpack. I had it when I left.”
Memories eking back, he thought. Piece by piece.
“When you left home?”
“Uh-huh. I had my stuff in it, and some money. Enough for the bus. I had to get farther than I had before, so I took the bus. I told a lady I was going to visit my grandma. I don’t really have one, but I can lie good when I have to.”
“Where did you go?”
“I … went to Staten Island first. I needed to get more money, and I found a basement to stay in awhile. A guy chased me out, but I still had my backpack. I had it when I got to New York. I like it here. Except…”
“Except what?”
“I don’t know … They lock the doors. I don’t like when they lock the doors. I don’t want to think about it.”
Because she’d curled into a ball, Sebastian didn’t press. He’d have to, he knew, but not tonight.
“Why don’t I read to you? I can start the book from the beginning.”
“What’s it about?”
He smiled. “Let’s find out.”
12
Eve woke before dawn. She saw Roarke working on his tablet in the dim light he’d ordered in the sitting area. She felt the cat stir, uncurl himself from her lower back.
Her guards, she thought, and couldn’t decide if that annoyed or reassured.
Roarke glanced over when she sat up.
“You could take another hour.”
“No.” She shook her head. “I’m good.”
He set the tablet aside, rose to go over and sit on the side of the bed. “You had a restless night, and not much of that.”
“Sorry.”
Now he shook his head, took her hand.
“Dreams,” she admitted. “Irritating mostly, and faded now. Except the last one. I was a kid with a bunch of other kids, all of us chained on some sort of platform or stage. And you know how they have that guy, the one who talks real fast and calls out bids?”
“An auctioneer?”
“Yeah, that guy. The dream decided he’d be Richard Troy, and there are all these people sitting there—a lot of them I’ve put away, others all blurred. And they’re bidding on us, and he says he’ll start the bidding on me at a dollar because I’m not worth much. Got a lot of laughs out of that.”