"There's got to be some Free-Ager co-ops around."
"I don't really do any co-opping or bartering these days. Don't have the time. I pull in a decent salary, Zeke. Don't fuss. Anyway." She blew her hair out of her eyes. "Come on in. It's not much, but it's home now."
He stepped in behind her, scanned the living area with its sagging sofa, cluttered tables, bright poster prints. The windowshade was down, something she hurried over to remedy.
She didn't have much of a view, but she enjoyed the rush and rumble of the street below. When the light shot in, she noted that the apartment was every bit as untidy as the street below.
And remembered, abruptly, she'd left a disc text on the mind of the serial torture killer in her computer. She'd have to get it out and bury it somewhere.
"If I'd known you were coming, I'd've picked up a little."
"Why? You never picked up your room at home."
He grinned at her and headed to the tiny kitchen to set down the food sack. Actually, it relieved him to see her living space was so much like her. Steady, unpretentious, basic.
He noted a slow drip from the faucet, a blister burn in the countertop. He could fix those for her, he thought. Though it surprised him she hadn't done so herself.
"I'll do this." She stripped off her coat, her cap, and hurried in behind him. "Go put your things in the bedroom. I'll bunk on the couch while you're here."
"No, you won't." Already he was poking in cabinets to put things away. If he was shocked by the stock in her pantry, particularly the bright red and yellow bag of Tasty Tater Treats, he didn't mention it. "I'll take the sofa."
"It's a pull-out, and fairly roomy." And she thought she probably had clean sheets for it. "But it's lumpy."
"I can sleep anywhere."
"I know. I remember all those camping trips. Give Zeke a blanket and a rock, and he's down for the count." Laughing, she wrapped her arms around him, pressed her cheek to his back. "God, I missed you. I really missed you."
"We – Mom and Dad and the rest of us – hoped you'd make it home for Christmas."
"I couldn't." She stepped back as he turned. "Things got complicated." And she wouldn't speak of that, wouldn't tell him what had been happening, what had been done. "But I'll make time soon. I promise."
"You look different, Dee." He touched his big hand to her cheek. "Official. Settled in. Happy."
"I am happy. I love my work." She lifted her hand to his, pressed down on it. "I don't know how to explain it to you, to make you understand."
"You don't have to. I can see it." He pulled out a six-pack of juice tubes and opened the tiny friggie. Understanding wasn't always the answer. He knew that. Accepting was. "I feel bad about pulling you away from your job."
"Don't. I haven't had any personal time in…" She shook her head as she stuffed boxes and bags onto shelves. "Hell, who remembers? Dallas wouldn't have green-lighted it if we'd been jammed."
"I liked her. She's strong, with dark places. But she's not hard."
"You're right." Head angled, Peabody turned back to him. "And what did Mom tell you about peeking at auras without consent?"
He flushed a little, grinned around it. "She's responsible for you. I didn't look that close, and I like to know who's looking out for my big sister."
"Your big sister's doing a pretty good job of looking out for herself. Why don't you unpack?"
"That'll take me about two minutes."
"Which is about twice the time it'll take me to give you the grand tour." She took his arm and led him across the living space into the bedroom.
"This is about it." A bed, a table, and lamp, a single window. The bed was made – that was habit and training. There was a book on the nightstand. She'd never understood why anyone could choose to curl up with a palm unit and disc. But the fact that it was a grisly murder mystery made her wince when Zeke flipped it over.
"Busman's holiday?"
"I guess."
"You always did like this kind of stuff." He set the book back down. "It comes down to good and evil, doesn't it, Dee? And good's supposed to win when it's over."
"That's the way it works for me."
"Yeah, but what's evil there for in the first place?"
She might have sighed, thinking of all she'd seen, what she'd done, but she kept her gaze level on his. "Nobody's got the answer to that, but you've got to know it's there and deal with it. That's what I do, Zeke."
He nodded, studied her face. He knew it was different from the routine she'd had when she'd moved to New York and put on a uniform. Then it had been traffic incidents, squabbles to break up, and paperwork. Now she was attached to homicide. She dealt with death every day and rubbed shoulders with those who caused it.
Yes, she looked different, Zeke acknowledged. The things she'd seen and done and felt were there behind those dark, serious eyes.
"Are you good at it?"
"Pretty good." Now she smiled a little. "I'm going to be better."
"You're learning from her. From Dallas."
"Yeah." Peabody sat on the edge of the bed and looked up at him. "Before she took me on as her aide, I studied her. I read her files, I crammed on her technique. I never expected to be able to work with her. Maybe that was luck, maybe it was fate. We were taught to respect both."
"Yeah." He sat next to her.
"She's giving me a chance to find out what I can do. What I can be." Peabody drew in a long breath, let it out slowly. "Zeke, we were raised to take our own path, to pursue it, and to do the best we were capable of. That's what I'm doing."
"You think I don't approve, don't understand."
"I worry about it." She slid her hand down to the regulation stunner strapped to her belt. "About what you – especially you – feel."
"You shouldn't. I don't have to understand what you do to know it's what you need to do."
"You were always the easiest of us, Zeke."
"Nah." He bumped his shoulder against hers. "It's just when you're the last coming up, you get to watch how everyone else screws up. Okay if I take a shower?"
"Sure." She patted his hand and rose. "Water takes awhile to come up to temp."
"No hurry."
When he got his bag and took it into the bath, she pounced on the kitchen 'link, called Charles Monroe, and left a message on his service canceling their date that night.
However wise and broad-minded and adult he'd sounded, she didn't see her baby brother embracing her casual, and just lately spotty, relationship with a licensed companion.
– =O=-***-=O=-
She might have been surprised at just how much her little brother would understand. As he stood under the spray, let the hot water ease away the faint stiffness from travel, he was thinking of a relationship that wasn't – couldn't be – a relationship. He was thinking of a woman. And he told himself he had no right to think of her.
She was a married woman, and she was his employer.
He had no right to think of her as anything else, less to feel this shaky heat in his gut at the knowledge he would see her again very soon.
But he couldn't get her face out of his mind. The sheer beauty of it. The sad eyes, the soft voice, the quiet dignity. He told himself it was a foolish, even childish crush. Horribly inappropriate. But he had no choice but to admit here, in private, where honesty was most valued, that she was one of the primary reasons he'd taken the commission and made the trip east.
He wanted to see her again, no matter how that wanting shamed him.
Still, he wasn't a child who believed he could have whatever he needed.
It would be good for him to see her here, in her own home, with her husband. He liked to think it was the circumstances of how they'd met, of where they'd met, that had caused this infatuation. She'd been alone, so obviously lonely, and had looked so delicate, so cool and golden in the deep desert heat.