Secrets in Death (In Death #45)(81)

She considered it; dismissed it. “No, she and the partner are solid, and the asshole gave off another vibe. The I-like-guys-better vibe, so I don’t think he’s into that or wants to be with Knight in that way. Anyway, it might take me a few minutes to wind my way through security and get the answer.”

“Then I’ll see about that stew.”

It didn’t take as long as she’d calculated. It helped that the man on the desk used to be on the job, and had even worked under Feeney before he’d switched from Homicide to EDD.

When she had what she needed, she sat back, frowned at her board.

“No window?” Roarke asked.

“He logged out at nineteen-six, pretty much when he said. TOD is about thirty minutes earlier, so no. No window. Asshole’s clear.”

“Come console yourself with cocido.”

“It smells pretty good.” She walked to the table, studied the stew in thick blue bowls. “Looks like a lot of vegetables in there.”

“As there’s also a lot of meat, that should balance it for you.”

Suspicious, she sat, spooned up a little as Roarke cut pieces from a small round loaf of warm bread. Even as she wondered why they couldn’t just have regular stew, she warily tasted.

Flavors exploded in her mouth.

“Okay, it’s really good.”

Smiling, he handed her a chunk of bread. “Now you can relax and enjoy it.”

“Did you ever cook anything? I mean where you put stuff with other stuff and add more stuff?”

“I have actually. When I came to Summerset, he insisted on teaching me—or attempting to—how to prepare a few basic meals. I hated every bleeding moment of it, and surely did my best to turn it all to shite.”

He grinned, ate. “Likely I didn’t have to try that hard. It’s the one area where he gave up on me, to the great relief of both of us. You?”

“One of the state schools I was in had a required course. They called it Life Science, and we had to learn how to cook some basics. I did the fake scrambled eggs. They’d either come out hard and dry or runny and mostly raw. The instructor finally gave me the check mark, I figure out of pity or desperation.”

“She and Summerset could have commiserated,” Roarke supposed.

Eve shoveled in more. Vegetables didn’t taste so healthy when they had a kick and swam around in the really damn good.

“Life Science, my ass,” she said between bites. “I was always coming to New York, and you can always get pizza, so cooking was as useless as knowing what year that guy on the elephants crossed the mountains. The strategy, that’s useful. But what the fuck does it matter what year it was? That was then, this is now.”

Amused, Roarke drank some wine. “Summerset’s angle was what if I found myself in some situation where it was cook or starve. And my angle was, I knew how to be hungry, didn’t I, and I could always steal food come to that.”

“He likes doing it.” She dug into the stew again, though she was pretty sure some of the green stuff was cabbage. “It takes all kinds.”

“Even after I was with him weeks, and he saw to it I never went hungry, I stole food. Stashed it away—just in case. After a time, he sat me down, told me I was taking that food out of someone else’s mouth, who might go hungry. And I should have a care for those who had less than I.”

Eve brushed a hand over the back of his because it touched her. And still, she puzzled over it. “But he didn’t have a problem with you stealing otherwise.”

“It’s a process, isn’t it?” With a shrug, Roarke ate. “Over time he pressed that point on me. Have a care for those who have less. In a way you’d find perverse, I became a better thief because I began to take that to heart and aimed higher.”

“It is perverse,” she agreed.

“And yet. It might have been easier to lift the shaky locks on this little flat and pull out the bit of cash the family had stashed in the potato bin, but I’d think: They have less than I, so leave that be. But that fine house there, with all that security to wrangle through? They have a great deal more.”

He shrugged again, unrepentant. “He had, for a time, two young mouths to feed and clothe and house and care for. And our world was a hard place.”

He smiled over at her. “You were born to be a cop, and I was born to be something else entirely. I’d likely still be that, if only in small ways that entertained me, if not for you. You finished the process, we’ll say.”

She thought of him, and thought of herself. Sitting there in the big, beautiful house, having a good meal with good wine before she went back to the job.

“I guess you finished me, too.”

“And here we are.”

“If we ever find ourselves in a situation, I could probably make bad, semi-disgusting fake scrambled eggs.”

“I wager I could steal enough to keep our bellies full.”

“Then I could arrest us both and we’d get three hots in a cage.”

“I do adore you, Eve. Every bit of you.”

“Mutual.” She nudged her empty bowl aside. “Don’t ever tell me what was in that.”

“There’s a promise. You want to get to your updates.”

“Yeah, and the case file the St. Louis asshole finally sent.”