Gated Prey (Eve Ronin #3)(23)

“Which is why turning myself into a sex object now would be taking a big step backwards for me and all women in the department.”

“I don’t see how.”

Of course you don’t.

Her mom liked to show off her curves, which had both embarrassed and infuriated Eve when she was a teenager. Because whenever her mom, a single mother, dressed that way, it often meant that Eve, her younger sister, Lisa, and her little brother, Kenny, would wake up the next morning to find another strange man in their kitchen eating their frosted cinnamon Pop-Tarts.

“I want to be seen by my colleagues as a detective,” Eve said, “not as a woman.”

“That will never happen, so use the advantages that you have.”

“You want me to use my sex appeal to get my job done.”

“You’re lucky you’ve got it,” Jen said. “You can thank me for that. My genes kicked the shit out of your father’s. The women in his family looked like turtles who’d lost their shells.”

“I’ll have to take your word for that.” She knew her mom’s genes were strong. Both she and her sister had her mom’s vibrant blue eyes and her tenacity.

Eve had never met anyone on Vince Nyby’s side of the family. She barely knew him. Her father was an episodic TV director who’d seduced Jen, a nonspeaking background player on one of his shows, with promises of big acting jobs that never came. He got her pregnant and then immediately dumped her. His idea of paying child support was sporadically showing up on Eve’s birthday to give her a Barbie doll. He’d fathered a lot of children with a lot of women and Eve imagined he’d kept a box of Barbie dolls for the girls and a box of Hot Wheels cars for the boys, so he never ran out of meaningless, generic birthday presents for his unsupported offspring. Vince was in his seventies now, hoping to come out of retirement to direct the pilot of her TV series, which was being written by a woman he’d briefly worked with years ago when she was “a baby writer” and not the top showrunner she was today. Eve hated that he’d found a way to wriggle back into her life just to enrich himself.

Jen said, “If you change your look, you could be as successful as the women investigators I met when I worked in the top forensic unit in the country.”

“You were a corpse on CSI,” Eve said. “I have shocking news for you. You weren’t really dead and that wasn’t a real forensic unit.”

“There’s nothing wrong with using your natural gifts to your advantage. Natalia Boa Vista did.”

“Who is that?”

“I’m surprised you don’t know,” Jen said. “She’s a top investigator with Miami-Dade Police Department’s CSI unit. She has terrific cleavage and an amazing arrest rate.”

“In other words, she’s a fictional character.”

Jen ignored the statement and pressed on. “Catherine Willows was a stripper before she was a Vegas CSI. She’s hot and everyone takes her very seriously.”

“Again, because she’s fictional.”

Eve felt her shoulder muscles tightening up the way they always did when she argued with her mom.

Jen sighed. “You’ve heard of the CSI effect, haven’t you?”

“It’s the unrealistic expectation, particularly among juries, that forensics results will be as quickly obtained and as irrefutable as they are on TV.”

“Well, Hardnose, the same goes for how they want their detectives to look. Don’t you want to win the confidence and the admiration of the public and your colleagues?”

Hardnose was what Vince called her when she was a child, supposedly because of her stubbornness and her “cute little nose,” though she often wondered if the real reason was that he saw her so rarely that he had trouble remembering her name. It was a low blow for her mom to call her that.

“And you think I can do that by showing a little cleavage,” Eve said.

“It couldn’t hurt. But that’s definitely how your character on the series should dress.”

That was Eve’s nightmare of what the TV series would be, if it ever happened. It was a big reason why she wanted Duncan to become the show’s technical adviser when he retired from the LASD.

“Hell no,” Eve said.

“Why not? She’s fictional.”

“She’s me.”

“People know the difference between fiction and reality.”

Eve felt the tightness in her shoulders rise up her neck to the base of her skull. “You just argued that they don’t.”

“No I didn’t. Where did you get that idea? If you want to look drab and sexless and never get laid, fine. But why shouldn’t your character be a knockout?”

Eve kept her voice even so her reply wouldn’t come across as patronizing. She really, really wanted her mom to understand her reasons.

“Because if the TV show happens, I have to live with how I am portrayed, and it’s not going to be as a detective with terrific cleavage and a great arrest rate.”

“Why not? That should be your real-life goal. Why wouldn’t you want to be a great-looking, successful cop? Are you striving to be a drab failure? I don’t understand you at all.”

Eve felt the spike of pain jamming into her head, so she massaged the back of her neck with her free hand. It was like trying to massage granite. “I can’t have this conversation now.”