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Plot Summary[]

The number-one New York Times–bestselling author J. D. Robb presents an intense and terrifying new case for New York homicide cop Eve Dallas, one that will take her all the way to the city that gave her her name — and plunge her into the nightmares of her childhood. When a monster named Isaac McQueen — taken down by Eve back in her uniform days — escapes from Rikers, he has two things in mind. One is to pick up where he left off, abducting young victims and leaving them scarred in both mind and body. The other is to get revenge on the woman who stopped him all those years ago.

- Amazon.com


Map[]

Please reference the New York to Dallas Map for locations or approximate locations of sites listed here.


Timeline[]

Spoiler warning!
This article contains plot details about an upcoming episode.


Approximate Story Date: late-summer, 2060[1]

Day 1[]

Chapter 1[]

  • Eve is stuck in her office doing paperwork, wishing for murder, and hoping to finish all of her work before the afternoon ceremony where she, Peabody, and Strong will be awarded the Meritorious Police Duty Honor for Integrity medal for bringing down Renee Oberman and her corrupt, murderous squad in Treachery in Death. She finishes the budget and expense reports and starts on the evaluations, getting as far as Baxter and both Carmichaels before Peabody interrupts her, saying there’s a man to see her and it’s life or death, the only way her computer will allow her to pause the task (per Eve’s command, knowing she hates paperwork).
  • Peabody sends the man back to Eve’s office, where he tells her “he said I could only talk to you, had to come to you” and he will kill Julie if they’re not back in thirty minutes. Tray Schuster and Julie Kopeski live in Isaac McQueen’s old apartment; he broke in and tied them up. His message to Eve is ‘There’s the bell for round two.’ As they head over to free Julie, Peabody checks her PPC and sees that McQueen escaped the previous day but the internal alert was buried. He killed one of the nurses in the infirmary and nobody informed Commander Whitney, which Peabody proceeds to do.
  • Carmichael and Sanchez (Santiago) cover the rear of the building while Eve, Peabody, Baxter, and Trueheart go in the front, wearing body armor, knowing that he won’t be there. They find Julie, raped and bruised, and tattooed with the number 27 in a perfect red heart on her left breast, McQueen’s signature when he was known as ‘The Collector,’ and the number he was up to when Eve took him down as a rookie officer twelve years prior. Julie has a message for Eve: ‘You owe it all to him. It's time to pay up.’
  • Back at Central, Eve briefs her team on McQueen. She tells them it’s not officially her case since it’s not homicide, but tells everybody in her squad to read his file, show his picture around, and pay attention, that he’s already hunting for number 28. Peabody says she read the file and studied the case when she was at the Academy, that she knows it was Eve’s first major collar. Eve tells Peabody he won’t go after her (Eve), but sees Eve as a competitor, that he wants to show her he’s smarter than she is. Then she tells Peabody they need to get ready for the ceremony, that it’s a big deal.

Chapter 2[]

  • Eve changes into her dress uniform, even the uncomfortable shoes, remembering that she’d arrested McQueen just six weeks out of the Academy, and wondering if she’d do anything differently now that she’s had twelve years on the job. Roarke enters the locker room to admire his woman in uniform. Leaving the locker room they see McNab in his dress blues, also complaining about the shoes, and he tells Eve that they moved the ceremony outside, in front of Central, for more exposure. He asks Eve to calm Peabody down, which she does by telling her to pull herself together and stop embarrassing herself and Eve. As she’s telling Peabody to suck it up, and don’t make her kick her ass, Phoebe and Sam Peabody arrive to surprise their daughter. Eve gives her the afternoon off to spend with them since the McQueen case isn’t theirs yet, and once it is she doesn’t know how long it will be before they have another break.
  • The ceremony is outside in the damp and steamy weather. Detective Strong is on crutches, and the crowd is full of Peabody and Eve’s friends. Eve thinks ‘apparently playing down this whole medal business hadn’t worked.’ Trina gives her a disapproving look even though Eve’s hair is tucked under her cap and Eve even spots Summerset. When Whitney tells her ‘well done, Lieutenant,’ and Peabody gets her award, she feels proud, and then afterwards she tells Peabody ‘no hugging – cops don’t hug’ – Strong is the exception because she sustained injuries. Feeney tells Eve ‘Nice work, kid’ and gives her a punch on the shoulder (the acceptable cop hug). Eve also sees that Roarke is proud of her, and then she spots McQueen deliberately walk by to taunt Eve, knowing there was no way she could get to him through the crowd. While she reports to Whitney, Roarke makes her excuses to Mavis and the others.
  • Whitney tells Eve McQueen’s being hunted by the NYPSD Fugitive Apprehension Team and the FBI, but Eve insists she knows him better. Whitney says they’ll have to wait for McQueen to contact her again, but in the meantime she should put together everything she knows about him, run probabilities, and use her resources. The warden and other prison personnel have promised to get a report to Whitney by 9 a.m., and she will be copied. She and Roarke drive home, where she and Summerset greet each other before she heads to the gym for an hour of exercise, culminating in pool sex when Roarke is waiting there for her.

Chapter 3[]

  • Eve tells Roarke about Isaac McQueen over a steak dinner. She said she started out at the 46, Lower West, which was a little house that Central absorbed eight years ago, and it’s now a club called The Blue Line. She asks Roarke if he owns it; he doesn’t but wonders to himself if she’d like to own her first cop shop.
  • She said Trevor and Paula Garson had been mugged by a junkie with a 6” sticker; he killed Trevor and Paula was in critical condition. Feeney caught the case and Eve was in awe of how he handled it – how he worked the scene, how he read the wits. She tells Roarke she can’t explain it, but of course he knows since Eve does the same thing. She says that’s when she knew she wanted Homicide, and to be that good. They called in uniforms to canvass and since she was younger, her partner told her to take the third floor of the building while he took the first, and they’d meet on two. She saw McQueen at his door, carrying two bags of groceries from a local market, and noted that his door had serious security, much more than the rest of the building. She felt like there was something off about him as she questioned him about the mugging.
  • She persuaded him to let her in to ask questions, and saw that all of the windows were privacy screened, and the door to the left had a security lock and two hand bolts. While she was interviewing him she noticed the soundproofing. He said he worked from home, doing e-work, freelance. She asked if he lived alone, and said that’s a lot of food for one person. He said something about her thinking he mugged a couple of people a stone’s throw from his home to get the food, and she confronted him, saying she didn’t say there were two people. He punched her, kicking her weapon out of her hand, then she kicked and punched him, and as she was reaching for her communicator, she saw the glint of a knife. He told her she could scream if she liked but no one would hear her, and none of her e-devices would work there because he had jammers activated. They fought some more, with Eve eventually punching him in the balls when he tried to slice her again.
  • She got behind a chair and let him come closer, then she shoved the chair into him and retrieved her weapon. She found the key in his pocket after she’d stunned and restrained him, and opened the door to hell, where she found twenty-two girls shackled, naked, covered in bruises and dried blood. She flashed back to the room in Dallas, until one of the girls, Bree Jones, started screaming at her to help; she and her twin, Melinda, were the most recently abducted – some of the girls had been there for years. Eve told them she was the police, they were safe, and she was going to get more help.
  • Feeney came in and said ‘Well, kid, you caught the bad guy today, and saved some lives. Not a bad day’s work for a rook.’ She was punchy from the tranq the MT had given her before she could refuse it, and she told him ‘F- that, Lieutenant. It’s a good day’s work for any cop.’ He asked her how many girls, she told him twenty-two, though she didn’t remember counting, and then two days later she was assigned to be his aide.
  • Eve knows McQueen has a plan, and caches of money, so she and Roarke begin their search. Eve figures since he escaped from the infirmary he will have plenty of drugs – tranqs, paralytics, etc. She thinks he’s too vain to change his appearance much, and he’ll be out hunting very soon since Julie was only a temporary release, not his type, being a grownup and all. They start with the visitors and communications logs, since he will want/need a partner. Eve sees that Melinda Jones was one of his visitors, about five years ago.
  • They find a woman in New York, Deb Bracken, and three others in Miami, Baltimore, and Baton Rouge. Eve figures she will start with Bracken and once she has the go-ahead from Whitney will have local authorities investigate the others. Eve thinks there’s something about the Baton Rouge woman, Sister Suzan Devon, who listed spiritual advisor as the reason for her visits.

Day 2[]

Chapter 4[]

  • The Big Meeting: Commander Whitney, two FBI Agents, Special Agents Scott Laurence and Elva Nikos, Lieutenant Tusso from the NYPSD Fugitive Apprehension Team, Eve, and eventually the representative from Rikers and his lawyer. Nikos lets Eve know they are not here to shut out the NYPSD, just to help, and Eve lets her know that she doesn’t care who collars McQueen, as long as he’s back in prison; they all agree to play nicely and share information. Eve fills the team in on the two prison employees she believes helped McQueen during his stay, Kyle Lovett, a guard on his block, and Randall Stibble, a lay counselor. She points out that since McQueen doesn’t do anything without a reason, and since he’s not an addict, he most likely attended Stibble’s meetings to meet addicts, women he could use as partners. Since Eve can’t let on that she already checked out the potential partners herself, she tells the team that once they compare the names she has (from background into Lovett and Stibble) with the visitors list, they will find his partner.
  • Tusso is focusing on his known hunting grounds – busy areas of the city. Nikos thinks he will move out of New York and go under for a period of time, so the FBI are looking at public transport and tolls. Oliver Greenleaf, the prison’s chief admin shows up with his lawyer, Amanda Spring, twenty minutes late and without all of the requested data on McQueen. Whitney reams them out, promising to take all of it to the media, from their more than twenty-four hour delay in reporting the escape of a violent pedophile to the murder of one of their employees, and the rape and assault of two innocent victims, including providing the graphic details of the attacks, and will charge the prison admins with obstruction of justice if they don’t give the rest of the data to him immediately. He will also have Eve remind the public of what she found when she apprehended McQueen twelve years ago, and tells them they will be lucky if the public doesn’t come after them with pitchforks.
  • The lawyer reluctantly leaves the files, and Laurence asks if Whitney would have followed through. He, in turn, asks Eve if he would have. She summarizes their actions and says in her opinion, yes, he would have gone to the media and roasted them. In addition, he’ll use whatever influence he has to see that Greenleaf, his lawyer, and his superior are fired. Whitney then tells the rest of the team that Lieutenant Dallas has just given a brief demonstration of why she’s one of the most valuable assets of the NYPSD, saying, ‘She observes, deduces, and reports with accuracy.’
  • Eve fills Peabody in, saying that the guard (Lovett) is a throwaway – McQueen wouldn’t have trusted him with anything useful, but Stibble’s the key to finding out who his partner is. She thinks McQueen won’t stay in New York because it’s her stomping grounds and he doesn’t want to give Eve an advantage, but he won’t go under. Peabody runs the FBI agents, and they look solid. Laurence is senior but he let Nikos take the lead.
  • Eve and Peabody interview Deb Bracken at her apartment. She confirms that she visited McQueen in prison eleven times, and was paid $100 for each visit by Stibble, but McQueen took her off the visitor’s list and stopped answering her messages two years ago. Eve figures it’s because he knew she wouldn’t participate in crimes that harmed children directly, i.e., she failed his rigorous screening. She smuggled in kiddie porn and electronics through Lovett. She said McQueen was really sweet to her, and it messed her up when he cut her off, but she’s been clean for nine months. Eve showed her the pictures of the twenty-two girls in the apartment when she found them, and Julie from the previous day, in case she had any thoughts about reconnecting with him.

Chapter 5[]

  • Next stop Randall Stibble, who is conducting a new-agey counseling session for addicts. Eve dismisses the class, and Peabody gives one of the participants the address for the closest Get Straight location, since that’s free as opposed to the special introductory rate of $75 that Stibble charged. Stibble spills that McQueen’s new partner is Sister Suzan Devon, and then Eve and Peabody takes him to Central for accepting bribes and accessory to some of McQueen’s crimes. The plan is to let him sweat for a while and then get the rest of the information from him, since Eve thinks there’s more.
  • As she pulls into the garage at Central, her communicator signals – she’s ordered to Whitney’s office immediately. Whitney tells her McQueen has surfaced, and has taken a hostage, Melinda Jones, and is in Dallas. McQueen’s message is that she needs to get to Dallas within eight hours or Melinda will have a finger removed… and that’s just the start. Whitney tells her he won’t order her to go, but of course she’s going, with or without permission. Melinda’s sister, Detective Bree Jones, is primary, and Eve will coordinate with the Dallas PSD. Mira asks to speak with Eve before she makes a decision, telling her she will block Eve from leaving New York if she doesn’t talk to her first. They hash it out, Eve admits she never wanted to go back again, but she’s not willing to let Melinda die because she’s afraid of her memories. Mira just wanted Eve to admit her fears to herself before she leaves for Dallas, and she makes Eve promise to let Mira know if she needs support while she’s there.
  • Whitney clears her to take an aide with her, but she wants Peabody in New York, taking the lead on the case, so she’ll take Roarke instead, as if there was any doubt. Whitney gives her a disc with data on the cops she will work with at DPSD, and wishes her good hunting. Roarke clears his schedule, telling her ‘Going will hurt you. Not going would break you.’ Eve is more disturbed by Summerset packing for her than by having to face down McQueen, since the first embarrasses her and she’s looking forward to the second. She thanks Roarke for going above and beyond the marriage rules and he reminds her that when he was in Ireland, wishing for her more than he wished for his next breath, she came because she knew he needed her, and tells her it’s not rules, it’s just love.

Chapter 6[]

  • On the way Eve fills Roarke in on the DPSD. Lieutenant Anton Ricchio seems solid – he’s been there for twenty years. He’s partnered Jones with his most experienced detective, Annalyn Walker. Agent Nikos calls, asking about cooperation, and tells her she and Laurence are an hour behind Eve. Eve says Peabody is now primary, and Nikos can get information from Whitney and from Peabody. Eve tells Nikos McQueen’s partner is ‘Sister Suzan,’ Nikos says she knew that and she didn’t exist until three years ago, but the identity was established before she met McQueen, and the DNA and prints belong to a ten-year-old corpse named Jenny Pike. Eve says ‘Devon’ will be in Dallas, still with McQueen, Nikos thinks McQueen may have already disposed of her, but Eve knows McQueen’s not done with her yet.
  • Roarke has one of his fancy cars waiting for them in Dallas, which he tells her is discreet, not flashy. Eve thinks even though it’s not solid gold, which Roarke points out would be a terrible idea, since it would weigh too much, it still looks like money – ‘whole big bunches of money.’ Roarke suggests that Eve takes it slow to start with, following Ricchio’s lead until he knows her, and then she can take the lead.
  • Inside the DPSD headquarters everything is sparkling clean and the officers are cheerful, making Eve miss New York even more than when she first arrived in Dallas. She tells Roarke the security guard told her ‘Good morning, ma’am’ before she gave him ID, and Roarke sympathizes, saying ‘It’s a sick world. A sick, sad world.’ Bree comes out to escort Eve and Roarke back and thank them. When Eve goes back to meet Ricchio, she is relieved to have the cops in the SVU bullpen stop moving long enough to stare at her, not quite the beady eye she missed, but close enough. Reminding herself that this isn’t New York, and she needs to be polite, Eve accepts coffee before starting business.
  • Bree gives Eve an account of what happened. When Bree woke up, she saw a message Melinda left on the fridge, that she’d gotten a call and had gone out to meet with a rape victim at 11:30 p.m. the previous evening, which is not unusual, except that normally when Melinda returns she removes the message. She called her sister’s phone and received a message from McQueen, the one that Whitney played for Eve in New York. They found her vehicle in a motel parking lot close to their apartment. Eve figures ‘Sister Suzan’ met Melinda outside of a restaurant (so they wouldn’t be seen together), asked her to take her somewhere else, having her to pull over so she could be sick, using that stop to tranqs her, and she and McQueen transfer Melinda to his van and take her somewhere far from the motel. Eve recommends looking through Melinda’s case files a year or more back to find the fake rape victim (DSPD had only checked the past few months), and will brief the team when the FBI arrives.
  • Bree asks why Melinda and Eve says because of her visiting McQueen in prison. Bree said Melinda hadn’t told her in advance that she was visiting him, that she would have stopped her otherwise, but it seemed to help her, got rid of the nightmares and headaches. Bree said the visit was mostly McQueen smiling, being charming, asking her questions that she didn’t answer, telling her she’d grown into a beauty, and then at the end Melinda told him it was wonderful to see him also, in prison, and to know that thanks to Officer Dallas, he’d be there for the rest of his life, and wouldn’t be able to hurt anyone again. She told him she loved knowing he was in a cage while she was free, living her life.
  • McQueen calls, and Eve keeps his focus on her. Melinda lets part of the ‘victim’s’ name slip, ‘Sara,’ and when Eve asks what he wants, he tells her he wants her blood on his hands and a pretty little girl in his bed before cutting transmission. The FBI arrive.

Chapter 7[]

  • Eve updates the FBI agents, and then they brief the rest of the team, with Eve taking the lead, of course. Eve tells the team that McQueen will abduct another girl within a day or two. One of the detectives calls her out for being confrontational with McQueen during his call, and she asks if telling him to get f’d is considered confrontational around here. Bree chimes in to say that was a good move, to keep him focused on Eve. During the briefing, Agent Laurence finds ‘Sarajo Whitehead,’ who actually died in a vehicular accident three years ago in Toledo, yet was allegedly raped the previous October.
  • The detectives head to the bar where ‘Sarajo’ worked and was ‘raped,’ the Circle D, with Eve and Roarke following. The owner/bartender, Mr. Vik, is the most helpful man ever, with the best memory, and finds the credit slip for the single non-regular who drank there the night ‘Sarajo’ cried rape, Chester H. Gibbons. Eve and Roarke head for the Mercy Free Clinic, where ‘Sarajo’ went after the ‘rape’ and get the files from Dr. Hernandez.

Chapter 8[]

  • Ricchio tells Roarke he will be working with Lieutenant Stevenson, who heads up EDD. He also tells him that his father recently retired as Deputy Chief. He was part of a task force years ago, working to take down a major weapons organization, and asks if Roarke is related to Patrick Roarke. Roarke cops to it, saying he’s sure Ricchio is aware that Patrick Roarke worked with Max Ricker, who Eve put in an off-planet cage. Ricchio sort of asks Roarke if he stabbed Patrick Roarke, to which Roarke replies ‘I didn’t have that pleasure.’
  • ‘Sister Suzan’ traded sex with the guard in exchange for conjugal visits with McQueen, and Roarke comments that she’s in love with him. Eve says he’s another drug to her addictive personality and he won’t keep her much longer. Eve works with Bree and Walker, and Roarke with EDD. The temporary office Eve is using is twice the size of hers at Central, but she makes do and sets up her board while Bree gets lunch for the trio. Annalyn tells Eve that Bree needs to believe they will get Melinda back alive; Eve tells her she knows they will. She also tells Eve that she’s Bree’s hero for saving her and Melinda’s lives. When Bree returns, Eve fills them both in on how she works, and tells Bree if she refers to Melinda as ‘the vic’ she doesn’t want to see the look on Bree’s face that Eve saw during the briefing.
  • McQueen must have found a way to provide ‘Suzan’ with drugs, so Eve looks for an illegals connection on his cell block, one who was released before McQueen hooked up with 'Suzan.' Bree and Walker research and visit salons, since ‘Suzan’ would want to keep herself looking good for McQueen, especially in the last few days. Eve finds a likely drug source, Burt ‘Thor’ Civet, who is in New York, paroled four years ago, and asks Peabody to bring him in and squeeze him hard. She sends a quick summary to the feds and she and Roarke head to the hotel, which is one of Roarke’s, and therefore over the top.
  • They have a tri-level penthouse with his and hers offices on the third floor. Eve’s hotel office already has a murder board, with most of the data on it, a sleep chair, a fully equipped kitchen and bathroom, and a second office for Roarke.

Chapter 9[]

  • Roarke dumps his day on Eve, for a nice change of pace. EDD in Dallas isn’t pleased to welcome Roarke to their team, and he’s still pissed about Ricchio bringing up their fathers, which he says is the Texas version of the beady eye. Peabody calls to let Eve know they picked up Civet, with lots of drugs on him, and they’ll get him to talk. Eve is seriously bummed that Peabody got Lovett, Stibble, and now Civet, while all she got was ‘Really Fat Vik, the completely cooperative bartender with the super memory.’ Roarke plays ‘Find the Van’ while he eats, and Eve thinks of more angles – McQueen likes expensive wine, fresh fruit and veg, good dishes and stemware, good sheets and towels, etc. so she searches for retail venues that carry those kind of things. Eve thinks ‘Suzan’ bought most of it online, but Roarke says she would have purchased things locally since she’s in love with him, and would want to set up house for him personally.
  • Roarke finds the van, purchased by ‘Sister Suzan’ and registered to the Heartfelt Christian League. They head to ‘Sarajo’s’ old apartment to chat up the neighbors. It turns out ‘Sarajo’ was quite the charmer, yelling at the kids and slashing tires. Eve thinks (correctly, as it turns out) that McQueen will go hunting for a new girl that night.

Chapter 10[]

  • At Isaac’s lair, Melinda is trying to figure out why she was taken. She asks ‘Sarajo’ when she brings her a sandwich, and is told that she’s stupid for not charging money for sex, as she did when she was twelve. Melinda realizes that ‘Sarajo’ doesn’t know that she’s disposable to McQueen. ‘Sarajo’ upends the tray with the sandwich and water on it, and McQueen tells her she needs to put on her ‘Aunt Sandra’ clothes. McQueen tells Melinda she was the only one to visit him, ‘and isn’t that a sad commentary on manners in today’s society?’ When she asks him if they’re still in Dallas, he tells her Dallas is the whole point, and she should figure it out. Melinda sees that there are four sets of shackles fixed to the walls, so she knows he’s out to get more girls. She realizes that it’s all about revenge against Eve Dallas for McQueen.
  • Darlie Morgansten is shopping at the mall with her best friend, who’s in the changing room when ‘Aunt Sandra’ asks for her help picking something for her niece, tranqs her, and walks her out saying ‘school night!’ and then she and McQueen got her into their van to bring back. At McQueen’s, ‘Sandra’ pushes the raped and tattooed (#28) Darlie into the room with Melinda, hits and kicks Melinda a few times, and leaves; Melinda tries to comfort Darlie.

Day 3[]

Chapter 11[]

  • The mall security shows that ‘Sandra’ had been to the mall a couple of times over the last month, making herself appear as a regular to mall employees. When Eve and Roarke get back to the hotel, Roarke runs face and body recognition software on the mall security to look for ‘Sister Suzan’ going to lingerie and other women’s stores in exchange for Eve agreeing to go to bed.
  • She, of course, has a nightmare, worse than usual, and Roarke has a tough time waking her from it. She’s especially scared because in her dream she got a thrill from killing her father over and over, and is worried she will lose control with McQueen. She doctors up Roarke’s wounds – mostly scratches and bites – from when he was waking her and they make love before they have to get up and face another day in Dallas. She refuses to have him call Mira, to get her out there, promising she will speak to her when this is done and she’s home.

Chapter 12[]

  • Bree comes up to the room and they have breakfast together while Roarke finds the name McQueen’s accomplice is using now – Sylvia Prentiss, dead six years. She lists her age as 46 and Eve almost passes out when she sees her ID picture, but doesn’t know why. The three of them watch the mall security discs and see her buying and stealing her way through makeup, lingerie, and shoes. Roarke also found the van because she valet parked it at the mall, a dark, dull brown now, registered to Davidson Millford, with the same address as Sylvia’s – a duplex leased to Davidson Millford ten months ago.
  • As Eve and Roarke head into DPSD HQ, Eve contacts Ricchio to have him put eyes on the duplex and van – only eyes, and to tail Sylvia if she leaves. When they arrive, Eve takes lead, giving Ricchio some info but wanting to start the briefing for everybody. She gives the two personas to the group – Sandra Millford to troll for McQueen’s vics, and Sylvia Prentiss the rest of the time. She thinks Millford/Prentiss is living in the duplex as both the IDs – sisters or roommates. Detective Price asks why they don’t put a tracker on the van, and Eve tells him it’s because McQueen might have sensors or security to alert him, which is what his NY vehicle had. Roarke stays in EDD, tracking McQueen’s accounts while Eve and the rest head out to the duplex.

Chapter 13[]

  • Does this all sound too easy? Well… as everybody’s watching the duplex, a kid gets on a bike, is riding up and down the sidewalk, while a woman with a dog stops to talk to Sylvia’s neighbor and look at his garden, and the dog is jumping and pulling and chewing on the leash. Sylvia comes out, opens the van door, the dog snaps the leash, the owner falls, the man helps her up, the dog races straight for the kid, the boy yelps and swerves his bike into an oncoming car that’s moving too fast for the quiet, family neighborhood. Price runs out, scoops the kid up, and his jacket falls open to reveal his badge and weapon. Sylvia notices, of course, and the chase is on.
  • Eve goes vertical to leapfrog the van, stops in front of the van, which crashes into her car. Eve gets out and arrests Sylvia before she can use her ‘link to call McQueen. Eve pulls Sylvia’s broken sunglasses off, looks into her eyes, and knows this is her mother, but tries to persuade herself that she’s just shocky from the crash. Since they have Sylvia’s ‘link they know she hasn’t contacted McQueen yet. Eve grabs the field kit out of her car and takes a swab from the steering wheel of the van so she can get DNA.
  • She calls Roarke to have him meet her at Dallas City Hospital, tells him she needs him there, and rides with Sylvia in the ambulance. She tells the doctor and everybody else in the vicinity that she’s dangerous and needs to be guarded at all times, not allowed any communications, and kept in restraints. Annalyn tells Eve they got her last communication, a text to McQueen saying he wore her out, she’d be at the salon and then over at 3. The van’s navigation has been disabled and all of her ‘links are disposable clones, but EDD is on it. Eve tells her to send another text around 2 saying it took longer at the salon or she’s shopping or whatever and would be there around 6 to buy some time.
  • Roarke arrives, Eve gives him the blood sample from Sylvia and one from her, tells him what she suspects, and asks him to have them analyzed to confirm. Meanwhile, he found two of McQueen’s accounts, that he’s using a South African passport, and the name of his bank in Dallas. He withdrew $75K yesterday, in person, so Eve thinks he’s getting ready to cut Sylvia loose, or rather just cut her, and run. Price apologizes for f’ing up the op, Eve says nobody wanted the kid to die, that was more important, and she goes in to Mirandize Sylvia, who is now conscious.

Chapter 14[]

  • Eve confronts her mother, but she won’t budge on anything – she won’t give another name, she doesn’t believe McQueen will kill her, she’s in love with him and she hopes she gets to kill Eve once McQueen finishes squeezing all of the money out of Roarke. Also, she thinks Richard Troy is still alive. Eve tells Ricchio, who’s doing the media spin, that she needs guards on her at all times.
  • Eve and Roarke head back to the hotel, and Eve pisses Roarke off by telling him he’d just be wasting his money if he used it to get her back from McQueen, which she also assures him won’t be necessary because she won’t be captured by him. Roarke is, naturally, furious that she would think that way and after forcing a blocker on her, tells her he has to live with what she does every day, and doesn’t need it shoved in his face. They eventually agree to shelve the drama for after the case is closed.
  • Eve watches the bank security discs and wonders where he got the suit and briefcase. She also sees the car he used, a dark blue sedan, including a partial license plate. She contacts Peabody to lean on Stibble for who purchased the car.
  • Melinda is comforting Darlie as best she can. She tried drinking from a bottle of water, but she started feeling woozy after a few sips and figured it was better to be thirsty than drugged. McQueen comes back in for round two with Darlie, but Melinda persuades him to speak with her instead by flattering him, saying the woman he’s with doesn’t have his intellect, and she’s a captive audience.

Chapter 15[]

  • Back at the hospital, Sylvia is reminiscing about the bad old days of being with Rich – having to be off drugs for nine months so the baby didn’t come out as damaged goods, but also the good – being able to use Eve as a prop in cons. After a couple of years, she found out Rich was skimming the take, she confronted him, he punched her, she continued to play long enough to pocket $50K, and then she took off. She thought things were different with Isaac than with previous men because he treated her well and even sent her flowers when he was in prison.
  • She was able to steal a laser scalpel by faking a seizure. She fakes pain, gets the cop to call the nurse, tricks him into removing the right restraint, and slashes his throat. She left the nurse alive because she was afraid she would have too much blood on the scrubs if she killed her, but bound and gagged her before she walked out in the nurse’s scrubs and boosted a car.
  • Melinda is keeping McQueen engaged, and he tells her older women are so easy to manipulate – just give them some attention and poetry and they’ll do anything you everything you ask. Just as he’s going to rape Darlie again, he gets a call from a name he doesn’t recognize. He hears Sylvia’s message warning him that Eve is on her way and tells Melinda there’s been a change of plans
  • Feeney got a lot of audio from confiscated ‘links, including a name, ‘Maxwell,’ which Eve thinks McQueen is using for the lease on his Dallas apartment. Bree calls to let Eve know Sylvia escaped, killing the officer assigned to guard her, and she has about an hour head start. Eve tells her to check the parking lot for missing vehicles.
  • As soon as Sylvia arrives at the apartment, McQueen gives her drugs and slices her throat, telling her she’s useless to him now, and then he leaves for his next destination.

Chapter 16[]

  • At McQueen’s apartment, they see that his car is gone. Eve gets to the elevator, and questions the woman who gets out with her two kids. They’re neighbors of the nice man in Apt. 208, Tony Maxwell, but the woman tells Eve he left alone about thirty minutes ago for a couple of days on business. Roarke gets through McQueen’s security, and they find Sylvia dead in the apartment, and Melinda and Darlie locked in a room. Melinda delivers a message to Eve from McQueen: stick around, more fun to come, and then she and Darlie are taken to the hospital.
  • Eve takes Sylvia’s body since she’s Homicide, with Roarke assisting. She identifies Sylvia’s body as Jane Doe until they can verify her true identity.
  • Eve thinks McQueen got everything he needed, and has another place in Dallas, but the FBI think he will leave Dallas and wants to freeze his accounts. Eve asks for and receives an hour so they can track financial activity. McQueen also left a memo cube for Eve saying he will see her soon, and she hears the barely restrained fury in his voice at having to leave ahead of his schedule.
  • Roarke confirms the DNA results, which came in when he went out to get the field kit for Sylvia’s body.

Chapter 17[]

  • Eve and Laurence note that McQueen has passed collecting and moved into hoarding, possibly to make up for the twelve years behind bars. Eve and Roarke head to Sylvia’s duplex to see what they can find that the sweepers missed. On the way, Roarke tells Eve he contacted Mira and she’s on her way. When she starts to object, he tells her he needs Mira.
  • Eve speaks to the next door neighbor, who asked what was going on – she heard there were cops there earlier and little Kirk almost got run over, and she heard Sylvia got arrested, and where’s her sister, Sandra Millford? Eve scares the crap out of her on the extremely small chance that McQueen decides to come back and tie off loose ends. Eve walks into the bedroom and is immediately overwhelmed by the perfume smell, almost passing out, even though Roarke says there was barely a trace of scent. She muses that despite all the high-end boutiques Sylvia’s bought and stolen from, she still managed to choose trashy things.
  • Roarke finds the motherlode in a box in the closet – illegals, cash, IDs, a picture she snapped of McQueen their first night together in Dallas, where clever Roarke sees an exclusive bottle of champagne, which can only be purchased at select outlets, and every correspondence from Isaac, with his suit measurements, flight plans under the name Franklin J. Milo, how to outfit the rooms in his new apartment, who to contact for that, and what to send to New York.
  • Eve calls Peabody with the New York info, and finds out that McQueen stole some things from Tray and Julie – clothing, a duffel bag, an old ‘link, so she figures he used all that when he checked into the hotel in New York before he had his nice clothes. Eve passes the Dallas info to Ricchio and pals, and heads for the hospital to visit Melinda and Darlie. Roarke wants her to take a couple of hours, and she agrees to it after the hospital as long as he doesn’t tranq her (he says he will let Mira do that).

Chapter 18[]

  • Eve talks to Melinda and Bree at the hospital, and Melinda remembers that McQueen had a monogrammed leather sheath for his knife, so Bree starts tracing that. She said he despised Sarajo/Sylvia, but she didn’t see it, and Sarajo/Sylvia despised both Melinda and Eve, but especially Eve. She talked about how they would pretend to auction Eve off, and then kill her anyway after they had Roarke’s money.
  • Eve assures Darlie that she wasn’t stupid, she was just polite to a woman who seemed nice and normal, the way she was brought up to be. Darlie tells Eve she can’t understand, and Eve tells her yes she can – it wasn’t McQueen, but it was someone else like him and she got away.
  • Darlie tells Eve McQueen made a video while he was raping her, and made her yell out Dallas the whole time. He also talked about whether or not to take Darlie with him when he moved and got a new mommy. Darlie’s father brings back ice cream cones for Darlie and Eve. Eve shares hers with Roarke, but when she tells him about the video McQueen made, they both lose their appetites.
  • Roarke says Mira is at the hotel, and Eve asks to stop at McQueen’s apartment before they go home because she’s not ready for Mira yet. Eve thinks McQueen has a nicer, posher place in Dallas. She sees that he left a lot of food and clothes behind, and a lot of it is duplicates, so either he’s hoarding or can’t make decisions. Since he told Darlie he wanted to play with Dallas at his feet, she thinks he’s looking at a penthouse or top floor apartment, and probably in a luxury building. She contacts Ricchio with that information, and then she and Roarke go back to the hotel.

Chapter 19[]

  • Eve is none too pleased to see Mira in their hotel suite, but then sees Galahad in the bedroom and her heart melts. Roarke and Mira talk – he’s frustrated because he doesn’t feel like he’s done anything more than track financials and make Eve eat, but Eve comes in and says he brought her the cat, and who else would know to do that, know that she needed the cat. She tells them she’s glad Mira and Galahad are there, that she misses Peabody and Feeney and Mavis and her bullpen, even Summerset, but if Roarke ever tells him she said that she will shave him bald in his sleep, dress him in frilly pink panties, and take a vid that she’ll auction off for huge amounts of money.
  • The first time Eve saw McQueen was the first time she remembered anything about her father, and then she shoved it back until the child she couldn’t save in Naked in Death, when she met Roarke. She doesn’t think she could have lived with the memory of the night she killed her father without having Roarke for support. She realizes that she felt joy when she killed her father, but not any time she’s killed in the line of duty. Mira says it’s normal – she was a child in terror and pain killing a monster, and the joy didn’t last, it frightened her and she suppressed it. He couldn’t make her into a monster; Eve says she’s worried that she might feel joy at killing again. She’s afraid to sleep again because she’s afraid she will hurt Roarke again, that she’ll become more violent with her defenses down in sleep. Mira thinks it was just because it was the first night in Dallas and her system was overloaded, that she wasn’t attacking Roarke, she was defending herself against the person trying to hurt her.
  • Mira also thinks that subconsciously Eve recognized her mother, which also triggered her traumatic and violent nightmare. Eve says that her mother hated her, and she’s relieved that she’s dead, but doesn’t feel joy – she would have preferred to get her into a cage. Now she doesn’t have to deal with it but she still wants McQueen to pay for the murder. She realizes that her mother was selfish and vicious and sly, and she’s afraid that she will look in the mirror and see her mother, that Roarke will look at her and see her mother. She doesn’t feel hate for her mother, but shame and disgust, and a little cheated at not getting the chance to get to hate.
  • Mira goes to her room, and Eve and Roarke and Galahad eat spaghetti and meatballs.

Chapter 20[]

  • Peabody has traced McQueen’s activity from picking up his ID, clothes, jammers, and ‘link at a mail drop, then visiting his old apartment to secure Tray and Julie. Peabody found the cab that took him to the Warfield Hotel, and reviewing the hotel security discs, she sees that he checked in as Milo, dressed in Tray’s clothes. He picks up another package there, probably the suit, then checks out wearing the suit, carrying a briefcase, and using a private car service to swing by Central for the ceremony before going to the transpo station and flying to Dallas, where Stibble had set him up with a car waiting for him.
  • Eve thinks he visited his second place first, making sure it was set up, then contacted Sylvia to get Melinda, and then had their reunion. She also thinks he took whatever jewelry he had given Sylvia that she left at the apartment to sell it. She thinks he used different people for the soundproofing and security for the second location. Roarke says before she didn’t care who took McQueen down, but now she wants it to be her, which she admits.
  • Roarke looks for the second location, someplace high-end, with at least two bedrooms, two baths, and an attached garage.
  • When Eve contacts Feeney, he’s watching a Mets game, to clinch their division, and Eve is even more homesick. She decides McQueen has enough at his new place, and won’t look for another child to abduct until he has time to regroup and get another accomplice. Feeney doesn’t think he’s set up to run games yet, and that he probably had a secondary place in New York for the cons, but they never looked after they put him away. They agree that even though it would be smarter for McQueen to lay low and wait for Eve’s guard to come down, he needs to clinch the division, needs to take Eve down, before he can move on.
  • Eve thinks his other place is probably a new building, so he can have the security and soundproofing installed as it’s built. She falls asleep while the search is running, and since Roarke has already been doing the same search, they take a bath in the enormous tub that Roarke has set up with candles and other romantic touches. Eve decides Roarke is right, they need to buy cowboy boots for Peabody, and Roarke suggests a ten-gallon hat for Feeney, glow-in-the-dark spurs and chaps for McNab, and bolo ties for the bullpen. They get out of the tub rested, make love, and then fall asleep to a replay of the Mets game.
  • Meanwhile, McQueen is roaming around his new space, feeling caged, but not wanting to rush getting a new girl, so settling for the recording. He regrets not carrying on the tradition of throwing his dead mommies in the river with Sylvia, but looks forward to doing that with Dallas after he tortures her, and decides that even though he wants to go back to New York afterwards, he’d be better off in a new location, and settles on London.

Day 4[]

Chapter 21[]

  • Eve has a nightmare close to dawn: she’s trapped in the dark, in the room in Dallas, with all the girls huddled around her, each with Eve's face as a child. She fought against the restraints, heard and felt her bone snap, each girl shrieked and clutched her arm, and Mira was there, asking her how being here made her feel. Eve tells her "F feelings, we have to get out." Mira keeps wanting to talk about it while Eve just wants to get out, and then Mira tells her that's all the time they have for today. Her mother comes into the room with her throat gaping and wet with blood, tells Eve she should never have been born, that it was all her fault she was killed. Eve asks how she (Stella) could hate her since she came out of her, and Stella tells Eve all she does is whine. Peabody appears to tell her nobody lays on the guilt like a mom and asks how Eve's doing. Eve tells her to get these kids to safety and get her backup and a weapon, but Peabody just tells her to take it easy, that they're all working to help her, and Eve sees the bullpen with everybody working, and EDD, and Whitney above them watching. Roarke is behind a glass wall working a comp, two smart screens, a headset, and is fatigued and worried. Peabody tells Eve she has to find the key before McQueen gets another girl, and not to let Stella make her stupid. Then McQueen walks in, telling her "Hello, little girl" in her father's voice, and bleeding from a dozen wounds he comes for her.
  • Roarke comes in, and Eve is pissed that he had to monitor her sleep while he worked, like she’s a child. She declares that this has to stop, the nightmares have to stop. As Eve is reviewing all of the data on McQueen, he calls to say hello and play the video of Darlie screaming for her. Roarke traces it to Lovers Lane in Highland Park, but obviously he’s not there and chose the place just to mess with her. Eve thinks they haven’t been looking far enough back, that McQueen started shopping for a new home right after Melinda visited him in prison.
  • Eve brings Mira up to the room to work on a revised profile of McQueen – she thinks he’s devolving, that he’s too focused on Eve to think straight, and his confidence has taken a hit. She thinks he thinks of Eve as his mother even though she doesn’t fit the profile, because she took his control away by putting him in prison. Roarke finds the new location – he used a corporate brokerage account with a law firm out of Costa Rica. The new apartment is leased by Executive Travel, which is making him money by renting it out to legit corporations, until three months ago, when it was no longer available.

Chapter 22[]

  • The plan is: make sure McQueen is inside the apartment, take down McQueen’s security, disable the elevator, and lock down the building. Mira will begin the briefing with an updated profile. Nikos starts to give everybody grief about the last op blowing up and tries to get Price kicked off the team, and the FBI in charge, but Laurence shuts her down, saying blame the dog.
  • Eve asks Mira to go out on the op with them on the off chance he has another girl and they need hostage negotiation, and also because Mira knows McQueen. They have eyes on the apartment, but it’s empty so they hold off with the security shutdown, but disable his vehicle, which is still parked in the garage.
  • More bad luck: McQueen is shopping at a gourmet market, musing about the DPSD’s poor security, which allowed him to locate Eve’s hotel room, and wondering which jar of olives he should choose. He hears a couple of staff members talking about the cops at the Gold Door (his apt building). The stock boy says he had a delivery over there and not just a cop, but a detective was there, undercover. He recognized him from when he spoke to his class but when he said hello, the detective acted like he didn’t know him, even though they’d talked after class. The detective told the kid he had it wrong, did he look like a cop?
  • McQueen calls Eve to whine, the FBI freezes his accounts, and they head for his apartment. It’s luxuriously set up, with lots of everything, including fresh flowers and fresh food, more food than he would need or that would stay good – Mira says he needs to acquire, to purchase and have, to make up for prison, and he’s also having trouble deciding what he wants, so he buys it all. Mira also thinks he needs a release, but probably won’t risk an abduction without a partner and without a soundproofed place to take her, so he might break into a home: ‘He’s angry. He’ll be rash and violent.’
  • Roarke goes into DPSD to work with their EDD team on McQueen’s electronics, and Eve stays behind at McQueen’s apartment, with the promise that she won’t go anywhere alone and that she’ll tag him when she’s heading back to the hotel.

Chapter 23[]

  • McQueen is really pissed off – he’s reduced to shoplifting, but is pleased he has still has his touch for boosting cars. He decides he will go to South Beach after he kills Eve – warm and lots of girls. He arrives at Eve’s hotel and heads to the lobby bar. He’s changed his look – cut and dyed his hair, added a goatee. He sees his target, a pretty woman in her twenties, Eloise, flirts with her, finds something in common with her (i.e., lies about where he grew up). He presses his knife to her, has her act like they’re a couple going up to her room. Once there she calls security, where he tranqs the woman (and binds and gags Eloise), steals her master, communicator, ‘link, and thumbprint, and heads up to the 58th floor, jammer in hand.
  • Once inside Eve and Roarke’s hotel suite, he is furious that she is living such a good life while he was rotting in prison. While he’s transfixed by Roarke’s wardrobe, he meets Galahad and follows him into Eve’s office, and he thinks it will be enough to kill her there, in front of the pictures of the girls and women he tortured and raped, and in the women’s cases, killed.
  • Eve calls Roarke to let him know she’s heading back to the hotel, and he says he will meet her there. She goes to her office, where Galahad hisses, alerting her to McQueen’s presence. Since she’d already removed her weapon, and didn’t have enough room to get to her clutch piece, she starts taunting McQueen. She ends up behind a chair, pushing it at him just like when she was a rookie apprehending him, but he jumps on her, breaking her arm, bringing her back to being eight.
  • Roarke is sitting in traffic, thinking about McQueen, when he realizes that the call the previous day was to track her to the hotel. He jumps out of the car, yells for his hotel security to call Ricchio and send an armed team to his rooms. He arrives to find Eve holding McQueen’s knife, standing over him. He talks her down, gets the knife away from her, calls for Mira to come. Her arm is dislocated, not broken this time. He starts to push Galahad out of the sleep chair when he jumps up on Eve’s lap, but Eve tells him he saved her life, Galahad and Roarke both did.
  • Eve tells Roarke she couldn’t kill McQueen but she couldn’t let go of the knife until Roarke talked to her, brought her out of her fugue state. Mira revives McQueen so Eve can arrest him, then she hands him over to Bree to take charge of, and when Nikos asks what happened, Mira takes charge and tells her Eve needs medical attention before she can answer questions and give statements.
  • Eve realizes she needs to contact Darlie to let her know McQueen’s in custody, and they need to secure the scene, and then she passes out. Mira has given her some pain killers, so she wakes up loopy. Mira tells her she’s been stabbed, beaten, choked, and had her arm nearly twisted off, but she’ll heal. Eve apologizes for getting blood on Mira’s clothes. Eve tells Mira that Roarke loves her, and nobody else did before. Then he comes in and tells her she’s the most beautiful woman ever born, and they all agree they should go home.

Character List[]

List of Main Characters Appearing in this Book[]

List of Secondary Characters Appearing in this Book[]

List of Recurring Characters Appearing in this Book[]

List of Minor Characters Appearing in this Book[]

List of Peripheral Characters Appearing or Mentioned in this Book[]

Trivia[]

Other Covers[]

Additional covers here

       
     

YANNIs[]

  • In Chapter 13, when Stella crashes her van into Eve's car, it says she's banged up pretty bad - no safety bags in that van, so she took a hard hit. Airbags have been required in all passenger vehicles manufactured beginning September 01, 1998. Later in the story, Eve says her airbags didn't deploy, so it's only a possible YANNI.

Footnotes[]

  1. New York to Dallas Pg. 1.

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