Desperation in Death (In Death #55)(15)

“Good questions. First, we make sure they weren’t hers to begin with. Odds are low, but we cross that off when we talk to her parents.”

Eve considered the time. “Plug in Dorian Gregg’s address in New Jersey. Get the estimated drive time.”

“Looks like it’ll take close to an hour, traffic depending.”

Not if they ran hot, Eve thought, at least until they got out of the city. “I can cut that down,” she said, and hit lights and sirens.

“Oh Jesus.” Peabody grabbed the chicken stick.

“Mina’s family’s on their way, but they have to get here…” She paused, shot around a maxibus, hit vertical to stream over a line of traffic. “And they have to check into the hotel, get to the morgue. They’ll want to spend some time there, and Morris will make time for them. We’re grabbing this lead while we’ve got it.”

Peabody tightened her safety belt a little more. She didn’t let out an easy breath until they hit the interstate. Eve still streaked down the road, but without the obstacle course of cars, trucks, cabs, buses, pedestrians, and bike messengers.

“Okay! Road trip. Can I have a snack?”

“You want a snack?”

“How about some chips?” To help ignore the speed hovering at about ninety—and she herself didn’t have the wheel—Peabody hit up the dash AC. “No-fail road trip food. We’ll go for the classic. You never cracked your tube of Pepsi. I’ll get that for you.”

“What’s the ETA now?”

“We should make the trip in about thirty-seven minutes at this speed.”

“That’ll do.”

“Do you think Dorian Gregg would go back home?”

“We find out why she took off—if she took off. No missing persons filed on her, but it could’ve been another abduction. If she and Mina broke out together, if that’s how it plays, home might be her first thought. That’s if they didn’t grab her up again, and that’s just as likely.”

Focused on the road, Eve ran through her thoughts.

“Same age group, both really attractive young girls. And look at them together. The contrast in coloring, in body types. If you’re making porn, they’d make a good girl-on-girl duo.”

“No drugs in the vic’s system, but—”

“That doesn’t mean they weren’t forced. It doesn’t mean they weren’t willing, either. ‘You do a few of these, we pay you, you get to wear sexy stuff, then we’ll let you go.’”

“But.”

“Mina was taken months ago, so willing doesn’t cut it for me, unless they managed to indoctrinate her. Add they got out, and she’s dead. Willing goes bottom of the list. No rape, no penetration strikes me as a marketing tool. Maybe any photos or vids they made, if they made them, serve as the same. Because there’s a serious investment here. Investments need a payday.”

“There could be others. Other girls. Boys, too.”

“Hard enough to hold two for all that time—no drugs, no restraints. But yeah, it’s possible. Maybe they have more locations to keep them, a network. Richard Troy didn’t get the idea of making me, selling me out of thin air. It’s a business. An old, tried-and-true business.”

“It has to cost, a lot, to buy a human being. Especially a young girl or boy, then it has to cost to keep them somewhere. Feed them, clothe them. You could get a licensed companion who’d do role-playing. You could buy a damn sex droid.”

“Those don’t hit the mark,” Eve said simply.

“What I mean is, it costs. So you have to have that kind of money. Maybe Roarke—”

Eve shot Peabody a look that had Peabody mentally rolling up in a ball.

“I don’t mean Roarke—not like that. God. I just mean maybe he heard some stuff about somebody with that sort of money. Or he could, in his Roarke way, dig around in that pool. And you probably don’t want that. That’s a terrible idea. Delete.”

It took Eve a minute, a struggle against her personal feelings, those flickers of her past. “No, I can’t say I want it, but it’s a good idea. He’s got connections, not just with stupidly rich people, but with the shelter, the school. And he does have a Roarke way. Let’s see where we are after we cross some of these angles.”

“All right.” Peabody waited until Eve blew past a pair of eighteen-wheelers like they were parked.

“And maybe we could have like a safe word if I say something or suggest something that hits you wrong on this. Like ‘aardvark.’”

“‘Aardvark’?”

“It’s the first thing that popped into my head.”

“What’s wrong with ‘shut the fuck up, Peabody’?”

“‘Aardvark’ could be code for that. So coworkers, suspects, and witnesses wouldn’t know. And if I shut the fuck up when you said ‘aardvark,’ you wouldn’t feel obliged to put your boot up my ass, which is painful.”

“I might feel obliged to put my boot up your ass before I said ‘aardvark.’”

“Yeah. There’s that.”

Eve let silence hang for nearly a mile.

“We don’t need a safe word, Peabody. And we’re not doing the job, not putting the victim first if you’re afraid to say or suggest something, or I’m touchy about what you say or suggest.